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ABOVE 
CAYUGA'S WATERS 

A Collection of Articles and 
Poems Which Have Appeared in 

THE CORNELL ERA 

From Its First Publication, 
November 1 868, to the Present Day 



Compiled by 
the Editors of 
THE CLASS OF 

19 17 



THE CORNELL ERA. Inc. 
ITHACA, N. Y. 



A 



<^'' 



Copyright, 1916, by 

The Cornell Era, Inc, 

Ithaca. N. Y. 



/ 



SEP 28 T9 1 6 



VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 

BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK 



<G)aA437853 
•1^ / . 



TO 

ANDREW DICKSON WHITE 

first President of Cornell University 

himself in his day a student editor 

and at Cornell from its opening 

the firm friend 

of student effort in Journalism and in literature 

we dedicate 

in gratitude and reverence 

this volume 



EDITORS' PREFACE 

In offering this book to the public, we feel that 
some apology is due for the diversity of subjects 
and varied styles of writing which we have in- 
cluded. Our principal object, rather than un- 
ity, has been the salvage of selections which have 
seemed to us too valuable to remain forever lost 
in the bound copies of The Cornell Era. Since 
the foundation of Cornell University this maga- 
zine has pursued the steady policy of obtaining 
for publication articles by prominent men upon 
all imaginable phases of college life. As a re- 
sult, the bound copies of The Era, covering 
nearly fifty years, are a storehouse of articles 
valuable for all who may be interested in that 
wonderful phenomenon, the American univer- 
sity. In our search for articles, we have also 
found many pieces of poetry which seem to us 
too good to omit from such a book. With a few 
exceptions the authors of the selections are either 
Cornell graduates or members of the Cornell 
faculty. 

All articles and poems which we have selected 



EDITORS' PREFACE 

for publication, with the exception of a few selec- 
tions which appeared in the Cornell Magazine, 
were written expressly for The Era or were 
published in it for the first time. The Cornell 
Magazine, which is no longer published, was 
formerly the literary magazine of our University, 
while The Era was chiefly devoted to college 
news. In view of the fact that The Era has 
succeeded to the function of the Cornell Maga- 
zine, we have felt justified in including selections 
from it. " Taghkanic " by Francis Miles Finch, 
which we have selected for publication, was 
printed in The Era with a note " hitherto un- 
published." However, after diligent search, we 
find that it had already appeared in a book en- 
titled, " The Scenery of Ithaca.'' We are in- 
formed that this was a publication of very limited 
edition in which pictures of Ithaca were pasted. 
Since there are but few copies of this book still 
in existence, we feel warranted in including this 
poem in our volume. 

With the exception of the article by Dr. An- 
drew D. White, to whom this book is dedicated, 
the essays and poems appear in chronological 
order. 

We wish to tender our thanks to Professor 
George L. Burr, Professor Martin W. Sampson, 
Professor Frederick C. Prescott, and Professor 



EDITORS' PREFACE 

Charles H. Hull, without whose helpful criticism 
and suggestions the task of compiling this book 
would have been almost an impossible one. 

Bertram F. Willcox. 
George J. Hecht. 



INTRODUCTIOlSr 

The editors have asked me to write a few words 
by way of introduction to their selections from 
The Cornell Era. They have made this re- 
quest, I presume, because I am now one of the 
few professors of Cornell University who have 
witnessed its birth and growth for almost fifty 
years. I have seen the inception of all the pub- 
lications of the student body, and the premature 
death of many of them. A still sadder memory 
is that of " the inheritors of unfulfilled renown,^' 
whose literary promise was so bright and so 
brief. 

Although the present volume contains the 
names of six alumni of the university, it cannot 
be regarded as representative of undergraduate 
achievement, but rather as a selection of inter- 
esting articles by men who have profoundly in- 
fluenced the students of Cornell. The list is 
far from complete and many names will have to 
be supplied by the pious memory of their former 
pupils. 

We are too apt to overlook certain influences 
in the early history of the university which are 



INTRODUCTION 

now yielding their fruition. Until 1896 the uni- 
versity was an undivided whole. With the ex- 
ception of the Law School there were only de- 
partments of study, and one faculty adminis- 
tered the entire university. Nor was there dur- 
ing that period any great predominance of any 
one department, or if there was, it was the de- 
partment of arts and sciences. The professors, 
whether men of science or otherwise, had re- 
ceived the old fashioned classical education, and 
some of them had enjoyed foreign study. The 
tastes of the first president were chiefly historical 
and literary and it is due to him that the uni- 
versity became the seat of liberal arts as well as 
of scientific and technical studies. 

At the very beginning of the university its 
students had the opportunity of listening to 
James Kussell Lowell, George William Curtis 
and Bayard Taylor, as well as to Louis Agassiz. 
And what an inspiration it was to have as a 
resident of Ithaca Mr. Goldwin Smith. There 
were in the permanent faculty many whose lit- 
erary influence was profound. I may mention 
here only the venerated dead — Willard Fiske, 
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen and James Morgan 
Hart — whose names live in noble collections of 
books, in poetry and fiction, and literary crit- 



INTRODUCTION 

icism, as well as in the hearts of generations of 
Cornell students. 

It is the fashion nowadays to represent the 
American collegian as an athletic savage, whose 
interests are bounded by the " gridiron/' the 
" diamond '' and the water, and for whom his 
alma mater is only a " side-show/' This is sheer 
nonsense, in my opinion, and I have been inti- 
mately associated with American students for 
nearly fifty years. An investigation was made 
here recently of the standing of the freshman 
class and it was found that the scholarship of 
the athletes was almost exactly that of the aver- 
age of the whole class, while the average of those 
engaged in the literary activities was consider- 
ably above that of the class. I believe there is 
far more intelligent interest in literary studies 
than there was when I was in college fifty-six 
years ago. I believe the literary output of the 
recent graduates is larger relatively than it was 
half a century ago, and the quality of this pro- 
duction, especially in verse, seems to me very 
high. Certainly Mr. Dana Burnett and my for- 
mer pupil, Mr. Thomas S. Jones, have shown that 
the atmosphere of Cornell is not unfavorable to 
the cultivation of poetry. 

Finally, in my day there was absolutely no 
intercourse between professor and student out- 



INTRODUCTION 

side of the class-room. How different now, even 
in the universities whose students are numbered 
by the thousands ! 

It is this spirit of the modern university, with 
its wider range of interests, that is reflected in 
these selections, and through them all I think 
I can discern the breath of the freer life inspired 
in this university by him who, in the midst of the 
campus, serenely sits in majestic bronze, and will 
be ever enthroned in the hearts of Cornell stu- 
dents. 

T. F. Crane. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

My Favorite Books . . . Bp Andrew D. White . 1 

The Chimes Bp Francis Miles Finch . 16 

" Phaselus Ille," from Ca- 
tullus By GoldiDin Smith . . 18 

Winter Song By Hiram Corson ... 20 

Successes and Failures of 

College-Bred Men . . By Charles Kendall 

Adams 22 

ViVEROLS By David Starr Jordan . 43 

To Barbara By David Starr Jordan . 46 

Evolution and Religion . By David Starr Jordan . 51 

The Bell Buoy . . , . By Lil)erty Hyde Bailey 57 
Faculty and Students — 

Past and Present . . By Ralph C. H. Catterall 59 

Anent Bonfires . ... By George Lincoln Burr . 73 

Taghkanic By Francis Miles Finch . 81 

A View of Athletics . . By Frank Irvine ... 83 
The University as a Fra- 
ternity By John Lovejoy Elliott . 90 

Then and Now . . . . By Qoldwin Smith . . 101 
The Spirit of the Univer- 
sity By Hugh Black . . . 106 

College Men in Newspaper 

Work By Arthur Brisbane . . 109 

Students Need Exposure 
TO THE Social Facts of our 

TIME By John R. Matt . . 116 

The Road of Life . . . By Martin W. Sampson . 119 

A Necessity to Culture . By Norman Hapgood . . 120 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Hills By F. Dana Burnet . . 122 

Student Activities and 

Studious Activities . . Bi/ Jacob Gould Schurman 124 

Geaduation By Liberty Hyde Bailey . 136 

College Man in Business . By Jacob Gould Schurman 139 



ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 



MY FAVORITE BOOKS 

A Letter from Dr. Andrew D. White 

Ithaca, N. Y., Feb. 16, '15. 
Editors^ The Cornell Era, 
Gentlemen : 

REFERRING to your request that I prepare 
a list of the books which have given me 
most real profit and abiding pleasure, allow me 
to say that the task you suggest is not an easy 
one; indeed, I am not sure that it is possible. 

Throughout my whole life I have been fond 
of books and, while my reading has taken various 
directions, it has been mainly in History and Bi- 
ography; but it would be impossible to recom- 
mend any single list of books on these subjects, 
for the reason that so much depends on the aims 
and tastes of the person advised, and I will, 
therefore, simply give a list of those works which, 
in a general way, have had most influence upon 
me. 

First of all, like most American boys and girls 



2 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

of my time, I was brought up to read the Bible 
and was nurtured in one of the religious bodies 
which incorporates into its worship very many 
of the noblest parts of our Sacred Books. Of 
these, the portions which have always seemed to 
me to give the keynote to the whole have been, 
for the Old Testament, the grander Psalms, the 
nobler portions of Isaiah, and above all, the 
Sixth Chapter of Micah; and in the New Testa- 
ment, the utterances ascribed to Jesus himself, 
of which the Sermon on the Mount is supreme, 
with St. James' definition of " Pure Religion and 
Undefiled," and St. Paul's description of " Char- 
ity." In perfection of English diction, there is, 
in the whole range of literature, nothing to sur- 
pass the story of " Joseph and his Brethren." 
Next, as to classic writers, — I should name in 
Greek, the more striking parts of the Iliad, and 
of Thucydides, and, in Latin, Cassar, Virgil, and 
above all, the Odes of Horace, the Agricola and 
Germania of Tacitus and the Letters of Cicero. 
The latter work exhibits the Roman Republic 
and the causes of Csesarism more really than any 
other books ever written, and it can best be read 



MY FAVORITE BOOKS 3 

in the new translation, which is just now appear- 
ing in the Loeb series. 

In English, I would name, of Shakespeare's 
writings, especially " Hamlet," " Julius Caesar,'' 
"Macbeth," "Henry IV," "Henry V," "The 
Merchant of Venice," " Midsummer Night's 
Dream," and, on a different plane, " As You Like 
It," "Much Ado About Nothing," "Twelfth 
Mght " and " The Merry Wives of Windsor." 

As to the great poet who, by common consent, 
stands next in our language, to Shakespeare, 
and in my opinion, in some respects, before him, 
I would name Milton, especially his " Comus," 
" 'Allegro," " II Penseroso," " Christmas Hymn," 
and above all, the " Sonnets." Of these latter, 
that upon " The Persecutions in Piedmont " has 
wrought a hatred for religious intolerance into 
my whole being. As to the " Paradise Lost," 
certain passages in it have strongly impressed 
me, but I have never read it as a whole and I 
doubt whether I know any other person who has 
ever done so. The passage in " Samson Ago- 
nistes " beginning " O ! how comely it is and how 
reviving to the spirits of just men long op- 



4 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

pressed/' etc., sank deeply into my mind when I 
first read it, and when I quoted it in a speech 
above the body of Abraham Lincoln as he lay 
dead in the Capitol at Albany, it seemed to enter 
the hearts and minds of my hearers better by 
far than any other words which I could have 
cited. 

As to Milton's prose, the supreme thing is his 
" Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing." 

Closely after these writings of Milton, I should 
mention Wordsworth's " Intimations of Immor- 
tality," " Ode to Duty," and above all, his " Son- 
nets." As to longer writings, " The Excursion " 
and the like, I have never read them. Next, I 
should name Tennyson's " In Memoriam." 

To these I should add sundry short pieces as 
typical of those which have had a deep influence 
upon me, as follows — Sir Henry Wotton's 
"Happy Life," Grey's "Elegy," Goldsmith's 
" Deserted Village," Burns' " Cotter's Saturday 
Night " and " Tam o' Shanter," Keats' " Ode to 
a Grecian Urn," various passages in Byron's 
" Childe Harold " — especially the Apostrophe to 
" The Ocean " and the " Night and Tempest," 



MY FAVORITE BOOKS 5 

Bryant's " Thanatopsis/' Lowell's " Massaccio," 
which I think is the most profound of his short 
poems, and his " Bigelow Papers.'' I also love 
and admire Whittier's " The Eternal Goodness/' 
from which various selections have been made in 
the collection of hymns used in our university 
chapel. 

As to oratorical writings, the three greatest 
speeches, to my mind, in the English language, 
and perhaps in any language, are Daniel Web- 
ster's " Reply to Hayne," Burke's plea for " The 
Conciliation of America," and Abraham Lin- 
coln's "Address at Gettysburg." These should 
all be read again and again. 

In fiction I have read much, but would give the 
foremost place in English to Walter Scott's 
" Quentin Durward," " Ivanhoe," " Kenilworth," 
" Heart of Midlothian," " Guy Mannering," 
" Peveril of the Peak," " Rob Roy," " The Mon- 
astery," " The Abbot," " Count Robert of Paris," 
and " The Talisman." I give these not as in all 
cases the best, for I am aware that the four last 
named are generally considered inferior to some 
others, but I simply name those which have most 



6 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

impressed me, probably on account of their his- 
torical connections. Scott is somewhat out of 
fashion to-day, but the fascination which he may 
still exercise was shown a few years since by 
James Russell Lowell upon his death-bed. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes came in to see him and 
said, " Well, James, how do you feel this morn- 
ing? " to which Lowell answered, " Oliver, I 
don't know and I don't care — I am reading ' Rob 
Roy!'" 

In the long list of modern English fiction, I 
would select Thackeray's " Vanity Fair," " The 
Newcomes," and " Henry Esmond " ; Haw- 
thorne's " Scarlet Letter " ; Charles Reade's 
"The Cloister and the Hearth"; Edward Eg- 
gleston's " Hoosier Schoolmaster " ; Kingsley's 
" Westward Ho " ; and in contemporary fiction, 
Kipling's Stories, Zangwill's Jewish Novels, 
Countess Arnim's " Elizabeth in her German 
Garden," and her other stories, and the best re- 
cent publications of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, W. 
D. Howells and Winston Churchill. 

The best short stories in English I have ever 
read are Mark Twain's "Jumping Frog" and 



MY FAVORITE BOOKS 7 

Bret Harte's "Luck of Roaring Camp/' and 
" Outcasts of Poker Flat/' 

In the boundless realms of French fiction I 
would name one book which seems to me the 
greatest romance in that language — Victor 
Hugo's " Hunchback of Notre Dame," and as the 
most fascinating dramas, his Spanish plays, es- 
pecially " Don Caesar de Bazan." 

As to simple historical novels, many years ago, 
when rummaging with the late John Bigelow for 
old books in the Latin Quarter of Paris, he sud- 
denly asked me: "What books of all you ever 
read have you enjoyed most? " My answer was : 
" If I am to be put on my Bible oath, I must tell 
you that of all the fiction I ever read I have had 
the most quiet enjoyment in reading Alexander 
Dumas' historical novels." His answer was: 
" You are right. It is the same with me." To 
these I might add Erckmann-Chatrian's novels 
of the period just before the French Revolution. 
As the best single short story I should name Ana- 
tole France's " Crime de Sylvester Bonnard." 

The most profound and penetrating of all his- 
torical novels known to me, in any language, is 



8 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

Anatole France's " Les Dieux ont Soif " (" The 
Gods are Athirst "). It reveals better, I think, 
than any purely historical work has ever done 
the causes of the French Revolutionary catas- 
trophe. 

In German I would name among the dramas, 
Lessing's " Nathan the Wise," Goethe's " Faust," 
and Schiller's great plays, by no means excluding 
" Fiesco," and I would certainly add Gutzkow's 
" Uriel Acosta." 

Of fascinating short stories illustrating the 
general history of Germany I would name those 
of the late W. H. Riehl, of the University of 
Munich — published under various titles, such 
as " Culturgeschichtliche Novellen," " Aus der 
Ecke," and the like. They are exquisitely per- 
fect in style, and reveal psychological and his- 
torical characteristics of the men and times con- 
cerned with most remarkable depth and charm. 

Finally, in the whole realm of historical fic- 
tion, I would name one romance which has 
seemed to me the greatest ever written (in any 
language), i.e., Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi." 
It was inspired, indeed, by Walter Scott, but 



MY FAVORITE BOOKS 9 

reached a higher range than anything ever writ- 
ten by him. 

As to other books, I was, during my college 
days, interested in Macaulay's " Essays/' I do 
not rate them as highly now as I did then, but it 
is well worth while for any thinking student, 
whether American or English, to read them. I 
read Macaulay's " History of England '' three 
times, if I remember rightly, and would advise 
every American student to do the same, and also, 
in spite of their style, " The Rise of the Dutch 
Republic '' and " The Life of Barnaveld '' by Mot- 
ley. I was also especially influenced by Carlyle's 
writings, above all, by his " Past and Present," 
and by his great prose poem, " The History of the 
French Revolution.'' Of writings in which wit 
and humor do wonderful service for right-rea- 
son I would name Sydney Smith's " Essays." 

Of works showing marvelous insight into the 
aims of various great men of modern times, I 
would place first H. D. Traill's ^^ New Lucian," 
and as masterly short biographies of recent Eng- 
lish statesmen, those given by James Bryce in his 
single volume upon that subject. 



10 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

In journalism I would name, as the best let- 
ters by a newspaper correspondent known to me, 
those of George Washburn Smalley, from Amer- 
ica to the London Times, and from England to 
the New York Tribune. They have been gath- 
ered into several volumes under various titles, 
and are still going on in the Sunday edition of 
the latter newspaper. I would also couple with 
these letters those of Frank B. Sanborn to the 
Springfield Republican. 

Of the very great number of biographies read 
by me, I was perhaps most happily influenced by 
Stanley's " Life of Thomas Arnold," and, in gen- 
eral, by Goldwin Smith's various writings, as for 
example, those in which he defended the United 
States during the Civil War, his short " History 
of the United States," and his book on Canada. 
Senator Charles Sumner, though at the time a 
bitter opponent of Goldwin Smith in various re- 
spects, said to me, just after the latter arrived at 
Cornell, " You have brought over the foremost 
writer in the English language at the present 
time, as regards style." 

I would also name as essay writers, James 



MY FAVORITE BOOKS 11 

Anthony Froude, whose account of the " De- 
struction of the Spanish Armada " is one of the 
most thrilling things in any language, and Mat- 
thew Arnold, whose " Literature and Dogma '^ 
has produced a lasting effect on religious 
thought. 

As a book to be taken up at any moment when 
a man is fatigued with heavier reading, a book 
which may be read through or read in parts again 
and again for years, a book which, I sometimes 
think, is the most delightful in the English lan- 
guage, the three volumes of " Autocrat Papers " 
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and I recommend 
them for profit as well as pleasure. There is an 
immense amount of profound philosophy in those 
papers. 

As stated above, my main reading has been in 
history and biography, and if I were to select 
three books best worth reading — as arousing 
thought — in the first of these fields, I should 
name Lecky's " History of Rationalism in Eu- 
rope,'' Draper's " History of the Intellectual De- 
velopment of Europe," and Guizot's " History of 
Civilization in Europe." 



12 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

The field of American history is, for Ameri- 
can students, so large that I hardly dare enter it. 
For the purposes of the student and for the whole 
history, I think that the most practically useful 
and attractive general history of the United 
States is by Schouler. As to the history of the 
Civil War, with the events that led up to it and 
the " Reconstruction Period '' which followed it, 
I should name as incontestably the best book, 
indeed the only book, that by James Ford 
Rhodes, entitled " A History of the United States 
from the Compromise of 1850 to the Final Res- 
toration of Home Rule in the South in 1877.'' 
It may be kept on one's shelves as a book of 
reference, but if its possessor is really interested 
in its great subject he is quite sure to read the 
whole before he has done with it. I would 
strongly advise reading American History 
largely in biographies as for example, " The Life 
of Washington," by Lodge, Franklin's "Auto- 
biography," edited by Bigelow, the " Lives of Jef- 
ferson and Andrew Jackson " by Parton, and the 
" Life of John Quincy Adams " by Seward. Of 
Lincoln, the great life is by Hay and Nicolay, 



MY FAVORITE BOOKS 13 

and there are various smaller biographies which 
are good. There has also recently appeared an 
admirable life of a recent President who has been 
most grossly misrepresented and slandered, in 
spite of the fact that he was one of the best 
equipped and noblest Presidents in the whole 
line, namely, Rutherford B. Hayes. If any stu- 
dent wishes to see what, in my opinion, is an ideal 
college life, it will be found in his biography. 

As the best short book on American history — 
recently published — I would name " The Hun- 
dred Years of Peace," by Senator Henry Cabot 
Lodge, of Massachusetts: with some reticence, 
but plainly, it tells certain truths which England 
has long needed to hear. 

This letter can be best finished, perhaps, by my 
saying that in my recent miscellaneous reading, 
I have been more than ever impressed by the 
" Letters '^ of Abigail Adams to her husband, 
John Adams, second President of the United 
States, to her son, John Quincy Adams, after- 
ward sixth President, to Thomas Jefferson, and 
to various other correspondents, during the wEble 
War of Independence, also at the time when her 



14 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATEES 

husband was minister to Great Britain, and an 
American representative in France and in the 
Netherlands, and finally, when as Vice Presi- 
dent and afterward as President, he was living, 
first at Philadelphia and, finally, at Washing- 
ton. I have come to regard Mrs. Adams as one 
of the greatest and noblest women who have ever 
lived, and for that reason, am having her full 
length portrait placed in the broad south window 
at Risley Hall, between the figures of Elizabeth 
Fry and Mary Somerville. 

In my very latest reading, three small books 
have impressed me especially. The first of these 
is President Jordan's book upon war, entitled 
" The Human Harvest." The second is the most 
valuable book known to me regarding the main 
simple reforms now most needed in the United 
States, namely, '^ The Reform of Legal Pro- 
cedure " by Morefield Storey. The third is by 
Dr. David Jayne Hill, entitled " The People's 
Government." All three of these books are short 
and no man who hopes to exercise a useful in- 
fluence upon public affairs can in my opinion af- 
ford to neglect reading them carefully. 



MY FAVORITE BOOKS 15 

To these I would add a short religious book 
by the Reverend Harry Fosdick, written in the 
light of recent science, entitled " The Assurance 
of Immortality." 

In conclusion, let me remind you again, that 
I do not at all name the above books as the very 
best that any man can read, but simply as those, 
which, out of my own reading, during a period 
of nearly eighty years, seem, as I look back, to 
have exercised the greatest and happiest influ- 
ence upon me. 

As this letter has been hastily dictated in a 
single morning — some things have, doubtless, 
slipped my memory, and some may need correc- 
tion. 

I remain, gentlemen. 

Faithfully yours, 

Andrew D. White. 



THE CHIMES 
By Francis Miles Finch 

Note : " The Chimes " is the first college song to which 
Cornell University can lay claim. 

TO the busy morning light, 
To the slumber of the night, 
To the labor and the lessons of the hour, 
With a ringing, rhythmic tone, 
O'er the lake and valley blown, 
Call the voices, watching, waking, in the tower. 

Chorus 

Cling-clang-cling, the bells are ringing; 
Hope and Help their chiming tells ; 
Thro' the Cascadilla dell, 
'Neath the arches of " Cornell," 
Float the melody and music of the bells. 

By the water's foam and fall, 
By the chasm castle-wall, 

16 



THE CHIMES 17 

By the laurel bank and glen of dreaming flower, 
Where the groves are dark and grand, 
Where the pines in column stand, 

Come the voices, mellow voices of the tower. 

Chorus: Cling-clang-cling, etc. 

When the gentle hand that gave, 

Lies beneath the marble grave, 
And the daisies weep with drippings of the 
shower. 

O, believe me, brothers dear. 

In the shadows we shall hear. 
Guiding voices of our angel in the tower. 

Chorus : Cling-clang-cling, etc. 

Not afraid to dare and do, 

Let us rouse ourselves anew. 
With the " knowledge '' that is victory and power. 

And arrayed in every fight, 

On the battle side of right, 
Gather glory for our angel in the tower. 

Chorus: Cling-clang-cling, etc. 



"PHASELUS ILLE," FROM CATULLUS 
By Goldwin Smith 

THIS Pinnace, stranger, boasts that it of yore 
Was fleetest of its kind. 
Whether it flew with canvas or with oar, 
It left all barks behind. 

It calls to witness stormy Adrians strand, 

Famed Rhodes, the Cyclades 
Wave-girdled, the wild Thracian surge, the land 

Hollowed by Pontic seas; 

Where, afterwards a pinnace, once it stood 

A leafy grove, and long 
Amid Cytorus' towering crest of wood 

In the sea breezes sung. 

Thou, green Cytorus, thou, Amastris, too. 

Old Pontic town, canst tell 
The good ship's story, for its timbers grew 

First on your craggy fell. 

18 



" PHASELUS ILLE/' FROM CATULLUS 19 

And in your waters first it dipped the oar; 

Then over many a sea 
Through storm and wrack its master bravely 
bore, 

Both when the breeze blew free 

Abaft, and when on either quarter came, 

Veering, the fickle blast. 
Nor did the shore Gods once its offering claim 

For salvage, till at last. 

Its voyages over, in this quiet mere 

For ever moored it lay. 
And to the Sea-Twins dedicated here 

Its gradual, calm decay. 



WINTER SONG 

(From the German of Burger) 

By Hiram Corson 

RUDE winter hath with ruthless hand 
The linden trees disrobed. 
And of the livery green of May 

The poor fields he hath robbed: 
Hath flow'rets, loveliest hued that grow, 
Deep sepulchred in ice and snow. 

But, meek-eyed flow'rets, yet do I 

A funeral dirge refuse: 
I know a sweet and lovely face 

Outrivals all your hues: 
With eyes like the skies of the sunny South, 
With golden locks, and pearly mouth. 

What is the skylark's clearest note 

Or the nightingale's, to me? 
My Mary's voice is a thousand times 

More clear and silvery. 

20 



WINTER SONG 21 

Sweet is her breath as the vernal breeze 
That comes o'er blossoming apple-trees. 

When her ruby lips to mine she gives, 

Oh, what a perfect bliss! 
The strawberry and the cherry are 

Not sweeter than her kiss. 
Then, May, for thee I'll sigh no more: 
The Spring-time lives and moves in her. 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF COL- 
LEGE-BRED MEN 

By Charles Kendall Adams 

THAT enterprising United States senator who 
took the trouble to present some very elabo- 
rate reasons for thinking that a collegiate edu- 
cation is a hindrance rather than a help to po- 
litical usefulness, was not, perhaps, quite so far 
wrong as some of us who are in college may be 
inclined to suppose. His presentation seems to 
be free from any glaring absurdity, and it is 
therefore entitled to a respectful and thoughtful 
consideration. The claim is twofold in its na- 
ture. In the first place, the statement is made 
that the most powerful and influential statesmen 
have been, and still are, men who have never en- 
joyed the benefits of a collegiate course of study. 
This alleged fact is then accounted for by the 
declaration that a course of instruction in col- 
lege makes a man too fond of subtle theories; 

22 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 23 

indeed, makes him so much attached to what is 
dreamy and impractical as greatly to weaken his 
efficiency in what he will be called upon to un- 
dertake. 

Surprising and even startling as this view may 
seem to us who are engaged in educational mat- 
ters, it is probably shared by a considerable num- 
ber of the people of the country at large. More 
than that, it is probable that a similar statement 
would find acceptance if made in regard to a 
large number of other vocations. The notion 
certainly is somewhat prevalent that in the so- 
called practical affairs of life a collegiate edu- 
cation is a real clog to one's advancement. We 
have all heard of editors who seemed to have a 
special aversion to college-bred men. It used to 
be said that Mr. Greeley and the elder Mr. Ben- 
nett gave unmistakable evidences of such an an- 
tipathy whenever a young collegian presented 
himself as an applicant for employment ; and the 
letters recently published in " University '' would 
seem to show that a similar feeling is still enter- 
tained by some of the more prominent editors of 
the day. That such a sentiment prevails among 



24 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

the managers of great business houses and rail- 
road offices, is perhaps less surprising. It may 
as well be admitted without reserve that in the 
opinion of a very considerable number of that 
respectable class known as hard-headed business 
men, the time spent in acquiring an ordinary col- 
lege education is time that might be devoted 
to some other purpose with far greater results. 
But if there is any one vocation, aside from that 
of the teacher, for which a collegiate education 
would promise to give a man a preeminent ad- 
vantage, it would seem to be the vocation which 
has to do with the affairs of men in their political 
and social relations. If the college-bred man is 
a politician or statesman of really poorer quality 
by reason of his collegiate training, it would per- 
haps not be very easy for the colleges to justify 
their longer existence. 

We all know that in our Government many per- 
sons have risen to positions of great eminence 
without the help, or hindrance, as the case may 
be, of a collegiate training. Washington, Jack- 
son, Lincoln, come at once into our minds; and 
even if we descend to a lower level we shall find 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 25 

a large number of judges, senators, representa- 
tives, cabinet ministers, and foreign officials, 
who, without a training in college, appear to 
have performed their duties quite as efficiently 
as has been done by their more thoroughly 
trained colleagues. What is the explanation? 
Is there a mistake in the allegation, or must we 
admit that the allegation is true, and then set 
about discovering an explanation to account for 
it? 

In the statement of the case, there is un- 
doubtedly a mixture of truth and error. For 
certain kinds of work, a collegiate training will 
probably add nothing to a man's efficiency; it 
may even detract from it. For example, in the 
carrying out of what has already been determined 
npon ; that is to say, in all those classes of activ- 
ity demanding primarily action, rather than 
thought, a man whose first impulse is to pause 
and think the matter over will be at some disad- 
vantage. After the work to be done has been 
fully determined upon, the man whose impulse 
is to act, rather than think, is the most apt to 
succeed. The most illiterate of Napoleon's 



26 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

marshals was the one who had the reputation of 
being the bravest, and for that very reason he 
was the one whom his master was very apt to 
throw forward whenever a dire emergency pre- 
sented itself. This was only, however, when the 
work to be done left very little room for the ex- 
ercise of thoughtful discrimination. It was only 
in certain junctures that Ney was the most ef- 
ficient of that remarkable group of soldiers which 
the discernment of Napoleon had gathered 
around him. Although the Emperor called him 
" the bravest of the brave,'' he nowhere speaks of 
him as the greatest of the marshals. He was 
simply the greatest for a certain kind of work, 
though that work was not of the highest order. 
We may go further and apply the same prin- 
ciple to the work of some of the most eminent 
men in the history of our country. Take the 
names that have already been mentioned, those 
of Washington, Jackson, and Lincoln. There is 
a very important sense in which it may be said 
that their work was primarily executive, rather 
than determinative, in its nature. By this I 
mean that it was not so much their sphere to 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 27 

determine what to do as how to do. What they 
were required to do had already, in a general 
way, been determined for them. For example, 
it is well known that Washington had very little 
influence in bringing on the Revolutionary War. 
He acquiesced in what had been determined upon 
by others, and then he was called upon to carry 
the work through to a successful conclusion. 
The same may be said in regard to the Consti- 
tution. Washington was by no means one of 
the more influential of those statesmen who de- 
termined what the Constitution should be. He 
became President after the Constitution had been 
adopted ; and, accordingly, the work of his Pres- 
idency was that of determining not so much what 
the political machine should be as how it should 
be put in motion. 

When we turn to the work of Jackson, we find 
that in its fundamental character, however dif- 
ferent in many of its characteristics, in one re- 
spect at least it bears a striking resemblance to 
the work of Washington. Jackson came into 
power when a great question was under consider- 
ation. He had to decide between the claims of 



28 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

the general Government, on the one hand, and 
those of South Carolina on the other. Aside 
from all questions of nice interpretation, he was 
a man, who, as a soldier, might always be relied 
upon to decide in favor of the cause which he 
represented. He probably cared very little for 
the subtle reasonings of Calhoun and Webster. 
He was the representative of the general Govern- 
ment, and he insisted with the vigor of a rough 
soldier upon all its rights. This was essentially 
an act of will; it was just what was needed, to 
be sure, but it was not an act that called for any 
careful discrimination. When the duties of the 
Presidency called Jackson beyond work of this 
kind, he showed as little wisdom, perhaps, as has 
been shown by any President we have had. 

Then, take the case of Lincoln. The great 
work he had to do had in a very important sense 
been brought to his hands. The war was inevi- 
table. When he was called to the Presidency, he 
found himself confronted, not with any such 
question as whether a war should be brought on, 
but how the war should be fought to a successful 
end. What he had to take up was a great execu- 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 29 

tive work; one of the greatest, doubtless, ever 
undertaken by man, but still a task essentially 
executive, rather than discretionary, in its na- 
ture. His duty was simply to ascertain and 
adopt the most efficient means of accomplishing 
a predetermined result. 

Now, it will have to be conceded that the work 
of these statesmen was a very different kind of 
work from that which originates and determines. 
Washington is often spoken of as the Father of 
his Country, but it is easy to make the figure of 
speech mean too much. The ideas which brought 
on the Revolution were not ideas which originated 
with Washington. It may, indeed, be doubtful 
whether the war of the Revolution could have 
been fought to a successful issue without Wash- 
ington, but the Revolution would just as cer- 
tainly have occurred if Washington had not ex- 
isted. The political doctrines which made the 
Revolution inevitable were distinctively the doc- 
trines of men like the elder Adams and Jeffer- 
son. They were the men of thought, in distinc- 
tion from the men of action. They were the men 
who kindled in the Colonies certain notions 



30 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

which made it impossible to prevent a separation 
from the mother country. Nor was the situation 
essentially different when it became evident that 
the Confederation must break down. The pro- 
visions that went into the new Constitution were 
provisions that originated with the same type of 
men. The real framers of the Constitution were 
the men of the most discriminating and far-reach- 
ing thought — such men as Hamilton, Madison, 
Jay, and Wilson. 

Then, too, after the Constitution was put into 
operation, we discover that the real controlling 
forces of the Government were of the same gen- 
eral nature. There were certain grave questions 
of a fundamental character that had to be set- 
tled by the exercise of the most careful and subtle 
reasoning. These were questions on which even 
the continued existence of the Government was 
to depend. The two men who may be said really 
to have settled these questions were not men of 
action, but were distinctively men of thought. 
They were the men who shaped the ideas of the 
people, and by so doing even determined the 
momentous issue of the Civil War. These two 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 31 

men, as every thoughtful reader of American his- 
tory knows, were John Marshall and Daniel 
Webster. And thus, to sum up the matter in a 
single sentence, we are brought to the conclusion 
that the men who brought on the Revolution, the 
men who framed the Constitution, the men who, 
through the Federalist, gave the people an under- 
standing of the Constitution, and the men who 
finally put upon the Constitution an interpreta- 
tion that brought to the support of it the people 
of the Union, and enabled them to resist the at- 
tempt to overthrow the Government, were dis- 
tinctively men of thought, rather than men of 
action. These men of thought, the Adamses, 
Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Marshall, and 
Webster, were all college-bred men. Only a very 
thoughtless, or a very ignorant man, would as- 
sert that the services of these men were less than 
of the very first importance in the life of the Re- 
public. Who will say that the men who made it 
possible to preserve the Republic performed a less 
important work than the men who brought the 
Republic into being? 

But, in comparing college-bred men with men 



32 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

not college bred, we are liable to fall into the 
very serious error of supposing that the differ- 
ence between them is far greater than it really 
is. This liability of exaggeration amounts to a 
real danger on the part of collegians and non- 
collegians alike. It is perhaps not surprising 
that those who have not had the advantage of a 
college education are constantly inclined to de- 
plore the fact of what they consider their early 
privations, and that they are often heard to ex- 
press the belief that they have labored under a 
constant disadvantage. College-bred men, more- 
over, who completed their college careers a gener- 
ation or two ago, are scarcely less inclined to re- 
gret that they were educated too soon to avail 
themselves of the modern methods and appli- 
ances. A matter of far greater importance is 
the fact that the student of to-day is tempted to 
suppose that he is himself one of the favored 
sons of heaven, to whom, in consequence of his 
superior opportunities and advantages, all good 
things are to come without any extraordinary 
effort. This supposition, conscious or uncon- 
scious, on the part of the student, is unques- 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 33 

tionably by far the greatest obstacle in the way 
of the student's ultimate success; for, if this 
supposition really takes and holds possession 
of the student, his chance of any very marked 
success is gone forever. It cannot be said 
too often, or with too much emphasis, that a 
college or university, however great in itself, 
is simply an opportunity and an inspiration. 
The moment it fails in these respects, the mo- 
ment it takes the place of personal will and 
personal endeavor, it ceases to be an advantage 
and becomes a positive hindrance. 

There is an important sense in which all 
men are self-made men. The college-bred 
man makes himself with the help of the col- 
lege; whereas the man ordinarily called a 
self-made man makes himself as best he can, 
without the advantage of any such assistance. 
And, indeed, there is a very important sense 
in which even the conditions of success 
on the part of these two classes are identically 
alike. In the way of illustration, look at the 
typical case of Lincoln. Those who have made 
themselves familiar with the early life of that re- 



34 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

markable man know that he studied language 
with the severest and most punctilious exactness. 
The language he studied was English, it is true, 
but he applied to English grammar as severe a 
devotion as the most ambitious classical scholars 
apply to Greek and Latin. So in the matter of 
history. Lincoln gave his powers to an investi- 
gation of the development of American institu- 
tions in precisely the same spirit that the best 
student carries into the work of our best his- 
torical seminaries. This work was prosecuted 
so quietly that it attracted no attention; but in 
the industry of his solitude Lincoln disciplined 
and stored his mind in such a way that his su- 
periority revealed itself as soon as the time for 
action came. There is no greater mistake than 
to suppose that Lincoln did not bring to the 
public service a most carefully trained mind. 
He had simply had the extraordinary devotion 
and ability to do without the help of a college 
what so many others would be glad to accomplish 
even with that help. 

Then, as another illustration, take the case of 
Edison. Does any one suppose that he has 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 35 

achieved his triumphs in consequence of not hav- 
ing had a college education? Let us not be too 
hasty in our answer. Is it safe to assume that 
he would have accomplished as much if he had 
taken a college course? On the contrary, is it 
not quite as probable that the professor of 
physics of twenty-five years ago, instead of in- 
spiring and lifting his pupil into a higher atmo- 
sphere of zealous endeavor, would have so de- 
prived all studies in electricity of their real vital- 
ity, as to have deadened the sensibilities of his 
pupil and driven him from the work in apathy 
or disgust? 

It would probably be entirely correct to say 
that the best instruction is nine-tenths inspira- 
tion. Perhaps it would be equally true to say 
that the poorest is that which forces into an in- 
hospitable mind an array of unwelcome facts, 
by that process of main strength which Milton 
very properly likened to the wringing of blood 
from the nose. The one is the method by which 
men like Louis Agassiz and Mark Hopkins have 
always succeeded in lifting the best of their 
pupils into a new and glowing enthusiasm for 



36 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

some great and worthy subject ; the other is that 
grinding process which, though it may sharpen 
the mind, seems sometimes even more certainly 
to wear it away. 

It is along this line of thought that we are, 
doubtless, to look for the explanation of the sur- 
prising instances of success and failure that 
throng the recollection of every man twenty-five 
years or more out of college. 

There were the facile men, who did everything 
well, and seemed capable of doing anything they 
might undertake. They never worked earnestly ; 
they even seemed to distrust enthusiasms of every 
kind. They were, however, in especial demand 
for class offices and editorial positions. In 
short, they were always a convenience whenever 
any bit of writing was wanted that seemed to 
call for especial neatness and dispatch. And 
yet, when these same admirable fellows gradu- 
ated and went out into active life, they soon 
found themselves neglected, and, a little later, 
quite overwhelmed by the great world of ener- 
getic beliefs and methods. 

Then there were those special paragons of ex- 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 37 

cellence, whose enviable distinction was that they 
were always in their place, that they always did 
their regular work well; that they always, in 
short, had their lessons and performed their 
parts with the most punctilious promptitude and 
exactness. Whoever else failed to do the most 
difficult work, or to give the most approved ex- 
planation of a difficult sequence of tenses, or an 
obscure theory of numbers, their answers were 
always as good as those of the book. Hour after 
hour, they pored successfully over their lessons, 
and, as a consequence, they never failed of re- 
ceiving the highest evidences of approval on the 
part of the faculty. But they had this limita- 
tion, that as long as they were in college they 
seemed never to think it necessary to do anything 
besides the learning of lessons. All knowledge 
to them was equally important, and they would 
have been horrified at the thought of slighting 
in the least degree any one study in order that 
they might rescue a little extra time for any 
other. In the end, therefore, they came to know 
a little of everything, and knew that little with 
the utmost precision. But, at the same time, 



38 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

they knew not very much of any one thing ; and, 
worst of all, they had no more absorbing interest 
in any one thing than in any one of a dozen 
others. Accordingly, they found, after gradua- 
tion, on going into the world's market, that there 
was very little demand for the especial quality 
of moderately excellent wares they had to dis- 
pose of, and so it came about that their lives have 
been a succession of more or less complete fail- 
ures. 

On the other hand, it is to be said that the 
successes have been perhaps quite as noteworthy 
and surprising as the failures. There were the 
men of dreams, who without often conspicu- 
ously neglecting their work were much given to 
reading, and still more to the habit of solitary 
thought. Their minds, under the influence of 
some one author, or of some one professor, drifted 
at length into certain ways of thinking; and so, 
in spite of their indifferent standing on the rec- 
ords of the faculty, they became possessed of some 
great and dominating purpose which, a little 
later, was to flame out into gratifying and per- 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 39 

haps even astonishing results. Men of this type 
were Webster and Beecher. 

Then, too, there were those apparently unfor- 
tunate students who were so poorly prepared 
that, at the time of admission, they barely es- 
caped being thrown out altogether. Some of 
them had good ability, but had had no opportuni- 
ties. Now their opportunities came. They 
seemed to know from the start that in their case, 
more than in the case of any others, success de- 
pended upon themselves. They soon acquired a 
good standing, and a little later, under the kin- 
dling influence of a supreme devotion to some spe- 
cial branch of study, advanced far on beyond 
what they seemed to regard as the mere vulgar 
requirements of ordinary class routine. To this 
new inspiration they lovingly devoted their ener- 
gies and their leisure moments, not only in term 
time but also in vacations. To every man of this 
group his work soon became not simply his pleas- 
ure but his chiefest delight. And so it came to 
be gradually revealed that the modest and ill- 
prepared freshman, who persistently kept away 



40 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

from class meetings and never thought of accept- 
ing a class office or a position on a college paper, 
was really marching on to that lofty and excep- 
tional kind of success which the world is always 
waiting to recognize and to honor. 

The secret of success is only partially in the 
knowledge actually acquired ; it is quite as much 
in that habit of mind which makes the possessor 
able to muster his powers and his knowledge and 
apply them all to the solution of the specific 
problem at hand. It is no figure of speech to say 
that most men forget the major part of what they 
learn in college. They do, indeed, remember 
those particular things which they have occasion 
to make frequent use of; but there are probably 
very few men who, after being out of college 
twenty-five years, would not admit that more 
than three-fourths of all that they had toiled and 
worried over in their college days has absolutely 
lapsed out of mind. And it is as true, perhaps, 
of one subject as of another. Certainly it is as 
true of the so-called useless studies as of the so- 
called useful ones. We are not, of course, 



SUCCESSES AND FAILURES 41 

speaking of specialists ; but, barring this impor- 
tant class, how many are there at fifty who will 
say that it is more difficult to remember how to 
construe a sentence than to analyze a flower? 
Who but a specialist remembers any more of 
algebra or geometry than he does of the irregu- 
lar verbs in Greek? 

It is partly, then, what the student remembers ; 
but it is still more the ability and determination 
he has to make the best possible use of what he 
remembers, that makes up, as a whole, his chance 
of ultimate success. If he has learned nothing 
so thoroughly as to hold it permanently in mind ; 
in other words, if he has no dominant interest 
or enthusiasm, his prospects of success are small 
indeed. But if, on the other hand, he is so for- 
tunate as to find that out of the debris of his 
years in college he has rescued a real, permanent, 
and overpowering interest in some one study, it 
matters not much what, he will be able to carry 
into the work of life all the advantage that comes 
from an untrammeled self-reliance, and, in ad- 
dition, whatever the wisest of his teachers, his 



42 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

friends, and his books may have brought to his 
assistance. Here it is that the successes and the 
failures of college-bred men are to find their ade- 
quate explanation. 



VIVEROLS 

By David Starr Jordan 

BEYOND the sea, I know not where, 
There is a town called Viverols ; 
I know not if 'tis near or far, 
I know not what its features are; 
I only know 'tis Viverols. 

I know not if its ancient walls 
By vine and moss be overgrown; 
I know not if the night-owl calls 
From feudal battlements of stone 
Inhabited by him alone. 

I know not if mid meadow lands 
Knee deep in corn stands Viverols; 
I know not if prosperity 
Has robbed its life of poesy. 
It could not be in Viverols, 
They would not call it Viverols. 

43 



44 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

Perchance upon its terraced heights 
The grapes grow purple in the sun ; 
Or down its wild untrodden crags, 
Its broken cliffs and frost-bit jags, 
The mountain brooks unfettered run. 

I cannot fancy Viverols 
A place of gaudy pomp and show, 
A " Grand Etablissement des Eaux," 
Where to win back their withered lives, 
The roues of the city go; 

Nor yet a place where Poverty 
No ray of happiness lets in ; 
Where wanders hopeless beggary 
Mid scenes of sorrow, want and sin. 
It cannot be in Viverols, 
There's life and cheer in Viverols ! 

Perhaps among the clouds it lies 

Mid vapors out from Dreamland blown; 

Built up from vague remembrances 

That never yet had form in stone. 

Its castles built of cloud alone. 



VIVEROLS 45 

I only know, should you and I 

Through its old walls of crumbling stone 

With moss and ivy overgrown 

Together wander all alone, 

No spot on earth could be more fair, 
Than ivy-covered Viverols; 
No grass be greener anywhere, 
No bluer sky nor softer air 
Than we should find in Viverols, 
Together find in Viverols. 

Love, we may wander far or near. 
The sun shines bright o'er Viverols, 
Grreen is the grass, the skies are clear; 
No clouds obscure our pathway, dear. 
Where Love is, there is Viverols, 
There is no other Viverols. 



TO BAEBARA 

(A Study in Heredity) 

By David Starr Jordan 

LITTLE lady, cease your play 
For a moment, if you may; 
Come to me, and tell me true 
Whence those black eyes came to you. 

Father's eyes are granite gray, 
And your mother's, Barbara, 
Black as the obsidian stone. 
With a luster all their own. 
How should one so small as you 
Learn to choose between the two? 

If through father's eyes you look, 
Nature seems an open book — 
All her secrets written clear 
On her pages round you, dear. 
Better yet than this may be 

46 



TO BAKBARA 47 

If through mother's eyes you see; 
Theirs to read — a finer art — 
Deep down in the human heart. 
How should one so small as you 
Choose so well between the two? 

Hide your face behind your fan, 
Little black-eyed Puritan; 
Peer across its edge at me 
In demurest coquetry, 
Like some Dona Placida, 
Not the Puritan you are. 
Subtle sorcery there lies 
In the glances of your eyes, 
Calling forth, from out the vast 
Vaults of the forgotten past, 
Pictures dim and far away 
From the full life of to-day. 
Like the figures that we see 
Wrought in ancient tapestry. 

This the vision comes to me: 
Sheer rock rising from the sea, 
Wind-riven, harsh and vertical. 



48 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

To a gray old castle wall ; 
Waving palms upon its height, 
At its feet the breakers white, 
Chasing o'er an emerald bay, 
Like a flock of swans that play ; 
Tile-roofed houses of the town, 
From the hills, slow creeping down ; 
Rocks and palms and castle wall. 
Emerald seas that rise and fall. 
Golden haze and glittering blue — 
What is all of this to you? 
Only this, perchance it be. 
Each has left its trace in thee; 
Only this, that love is strong. 
And the arm of fate is long. 

Deeply hidden in your eyes, 
Undeciphered histories, 
Graven in the ages vast. 
Lie there to be read at last : 
Graven deep, they must be true; 
Shall I read them unto you? 

Once a man, now faint and dim 
With the centuries over him, 



TO BARBAKA 49 

Wandered from an ancient town, 
On its hills slow creeping down, 
O'er the ocean, bold and free. 
Roved in careless errantry. 
With Vizcaino had he fared. 
And his strange adventures dared ; 
Restless ever, drifting on. 
Far as foot of man had gone; 
On his cheek the salt that clings 
To the Headland of the Kings, 
Flung from the enchanted sea 
Off Saint Francis Assisi! 
Roved o'er the ocean blue — 
What has he to do with you? 

Only this : he sailed one day 

To your Massachusetts Bay, 

And this voyage was his last. 

For Love seized and held him fast. 

Of that old romance of his 

None can tell you more than this : 

Saving that, as legacies 

To his child, he left his eyes, 

Black as the obsidian stone, 



50 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

With a luster all their own, 
Seeing as by magic ken 
Deep into the hearts of men, 
And mid tides of changing years. 
Dreams and hopes and cares and fears. 
Life that flows and ebbs alway. 
Love has kept them loyally. 

Once, it chanced, they came to shine, 
Straight into this heart of mine. 

Little lady, cease your play 
For a moment, if you may ; 
All I ask is, silently. 
Turn your mother's eyes on me. 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 
By David Starr Jordan 

THE dread of the theories of evolution, for- 
merly wide-spread among religious people, 
but now subsiding everywhere except in the 
" backwoods " of sectarianism, constitutes a 
phase of the doubt with which each passing gen- 
eration looks on the discoveries and aspirations 
of the generation coming on. It is not in any 
proper sense a conflict between science and re- 
ligion, but a conflict between progress and con- 
servatism, and thirty years ago the same con- 
flict existed within the ranks of scientific men 
themselves. 

Each new generation has a larger conception 
of the universe and of the terrible, unseen powers 
by which all things visible are controlled. The 
spread of science has given deeper and deeper 
meaning to our conception of the great center 
of intelligence in which originate these powers 

51 



52 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

and forces — forever acting, the only unchang- 
ing elements in a changing universe. 

The discoveries of science must necessarily be 
the work of those who as experts have devoted 
their lives to such investigations. These men 
must do their work in advance both of church 
and of state. As Dr. Le Conte has well said, 
" They cannot be expected to wait until the truth 
of their discoveries has been passed upon and 
approved by the orthodox." All truth will 
sooner or later justify itself, and doubtless the 
approval of the churches will come in time in 
the science of evolution as it has already come 
in the sciences of astronomy and geology. It is 
a matter of little importance whether it comes 
or not, for popular acceptance of truth adds 
nothing to its value. Those who do not recog- 
nize truth are the only losers by its rejection. 
In history they are usually remembered only as 
the darkeners of counsel in the progress of truth. 
Thus it is that in the words of Huxley, "Ex- 
tinguished theologians lie about the cradle of 
every infant science — as the strangled snakes 
beside the cradle of the infant Hercules." 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 53 

The doctrine of evolution is simply a broad 
way of looking at the universe, not as a finished 
product, but as being forever in a condition of 
orderly change. It is not a belief or a body of 
doctrines; it is rather an attitude toward the 
problems of nature. It is the recognition that 
in all the changing scenes of the changing uni- 
verse there is the unity of unchanging law, the 
continuity of Him in whom men have found no 
" variableness nor shadow of turning.'' 

But men who have no acquaintance with na- 
ture at first hand, those whose knowledge of mod- 
ern investigations is but fragmentary and casual, 
are distressed by the results of these investiga- 
tions. As cherished superstitions are dissipated, 
they find no stability anywhere, and from this 
feeling of fear of the progress of knowledge few 
can escape. The most advanced thinker of one 
generation as he passes to the shady side of life 
turns naturally to conservatism ; he has the fear 
that this time '' the boys are carrying matters a 
little too far.'' The truth is not what he ex- 
pected when he was himself a radical, and he is 
not quite confident of the good judgment of those 



54 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATEES 

who are radicals of to-day. So, as Dr. Ross has 
said, " He will have the appalling feeling of being 
nowhere at home, that awful sinking as if the 
bottom were dropping out of all things." 

And yet each new generation finds its own rea- 
son for its own optimism. Right doing and right 
thinking in each age justify themselves. In all 
ages, " Those who bring sunshine into the lives 
of others cannot keep it from themselves." In 
all ages, " There is room for the man of force 
and he makes room for many." 

In the death of any cherished superstition, 
optimism gains more than it loses. Every age 
is henceforth to be an age of transition, for in 
transition the human mind is growing. The de- 
velopment of the human mind is apparently the 
highest present business of the powers of nature, 
and if ever the human intellect ceases to grow 
and settles down in contentment with its past 
achievements, we may expect that some race of 
our simian relatives will take up our fallen ban- 
ner and continue the task that was too great for 
us. The task will never be abandoned, and the 
progress of human knowledge will go on till the 



EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 55 

fires that light the earth are extinguished and 
sunshine and protoplasm vanish together. In 
the growth of the human mind the theology of 
one age becomes the superstition of the next. 
The gods of one mythology become demons in 
that which succeeds it. 

Creeds will change; they are human expres- 
sions. But though every word in every creed 
should be false, that for which they stand will not 
pass away. The " Human Reaction " from the 
forces of nature, the kindness and reverence 
which may find in creeds and ceremonies their 
crude expression, are a part of humanity which 
will last as long as humanity endures. 

So the conflict between science and religion is 
a battle of the immortals. In every struggle the 
victory will be on the side of science. From the 
dust of every defeat religion will arise brighter 
and stronger, because with each defeat she will 
be more and more freed from the bonds of hu- 
man superstition. 

But in another sense there never was a con- 
flict between religion and science. They do not 
occupy the same field. The dreams and aspira- 



56 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

tions of the human spirit cannot be reduced to 
the forms of exact science. Religion must look 
beyond knowledge. At the same time no part 
of the field of science has ever been claimed by 
religion except as a trespasser. Whatever limit 
to human thought has been set in the name of 
religion or in any other name, must be cast off. 
Fetters once cast off can never be forged again. 
Roma locuta est: causa flnita esty is a dictum 
never recognized by science. Her causes are 
never finished. Her followers can never recog- 
nize any power on earth as capable of giving 
answers to the problems they are trying to solve. 
Only nature herself can answer questions about 
nature, and only those who patiently give their 
lives to awaiting her answers can expect to re- 
ceive her secrets. 



THE BELL BUOY 
By Liberty Hyde Bailey 

1SIT on the waves, 
I toss in the storm, 
And the salt spray laves 
My skeleton form; 
And all the day long, 
With a reckless ease, 
I roll my ding-dong 
On the ear o' the breeze. 

And the mermaids hear 
In the ebb and flow. 
And they shake with fear 
In their beds below; 
And the sea-sprite goes 
In haste and away. 
As I ring out my woes 
At the break of day. 

57 



58 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

And still thro' the night, 
When the sea-winds moan, 
And the phosphorous light 
Mocks the shivering moon, 
I toll out the time 
In monotone knell, 
In dull hollow rime, 
Like a voice from hell. 

So I sit and swing 
Where the billows be, 
A phantom-like thing — 
A ghost of the sea; 
And out from my bars 
Floats the doleful tone — 
Out under the stars — 
Of a soul alone. 



FACULTY AND STUDENTS — PAST AND 
PEESENT 

By Ralph C. H. Catterall 

IN the good old days which we all regret when 
we speak of them without thinking, but 
which at bottom we are glad to see no more, the 
relations between the faculties of our colleges 
and universities and the untamed youth who were 
supposed to thirst after knowledge and culture 
were not always of the pleasantest. They were 
indeed of a character which compelled the un- 
worldly professors to assume the functions of 
village policemen, and hence forced the students 
to seek means of retaliation against the " guard- 
ians of his youth." The young lack imagina- 
tion, and methods of revenge, as might be ex- 
pected, were crass, crude, and barbarous; a 
shower of stones thrown through the window of 
some professor, practical jokes which might 
maim a man for life, the occasional mobbing of 

59 



60 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

some instructor more unpopular or less tactful 
than the rest, and at long intervals the killing 
of a too rash tutor who, during some college 
brawl, ran in between " the fell opposed points 
of mighty opposites." Does any one doubt the 
truth of this description? If he does, he has 
never had the privilege of sitting with the revered 
remnants of these old faculties and hearing 
their stories of those much-regretted days. Nay, 
he has never read the memoirs which the instruc- 
tors of our fathers have left behind them, nor 
even the college novels of those days, which one 
and all contain soul-stirring stories of the most 
delicious and laughable larks played upon the 
unsuspecting tutor or professor. I recall sit- 
ting at table last year with one of the oldest and 
one of the most famous teachers in the United 
States, who regaled us with a diverting story of 
his police experiences as a young man with one 
of the worst toughs of the college. The affair 
culminated on the morning of Commencement 
Day in the throwing of a huge stone through the 
tutor's window just as he was getting out of bed. 
A little more and this formidable engine of war 



FACULTY AND STUDENTS 61 

would have brained him and so forever have 
deprived generations of American students of the 
learning, wit, humor, ferocity, and crustiness of 
one of the most remarkable men who ever did 
the United States the honor to live in it, and the 
supreme service of criticizing it at every step 
of its career. 

But we do not need to wander far afield for 
illustrations of the old-time felicity of college 
faculties in their relations with the students. 
We have all read, or should have read, the 
" Autobiography of Ex-President White," and 
there we will find that in one college of his ac- 
quaintance it was his privilege to behold " a pro- 
fessor, an excellent clergyman, seeking to quell 
hideous riot in a student's room, buried under a 
heap of carpets, mattresses, counterpanes, and 
blankets ; to see another clerical professor forced 
to retire through the panel of a door under a 
shower of lexicons, boots, and brushes, and to see 
even the president himself, on one occasion, 
obliged to leave his lecture-room by a ladder 
from a window, and, on another, kept at bay by 
a shower of beer bottles. 



62 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

" One favorite occupation/' he continues, " was 
rolling cannon balls along the corridors at mid- 
night, with frightful din and much damage; a 
tutor, having one night been successful in catch- 
ing and confiscating two of these, pounced from 
his door the next night upon a third; but this 
having been heated nearly to redness and 
launched from a shovel, the result was that he 
wore bandages upon his hands for many days.'' 

Now Mr. White is careful to add that this col- 
lege was in this respect the worst specimen he 
ever saw, but when he comes to speak of Yale, 
he recalls " the fatal wounding of Tutor 
Dwight," and the " maiming of Tutor Goodrich," 
and we all know that Yale was not the only col- 
lege in the country where members of the faculty 
and students were involved in bloody brawls. 

With that commendable and naive conserva- 
tism which is so characteristic of the young and 
particularly of the college student, these rela- 
tions were religiously continued, and they show 
a remarkable state of mind in regard to the posi- 
tion of the faculty. For the most curious aspect 
of these relations is found in the fact that facul- 



FACULTY AND STUDENTS 63 

ties were regarded with awe and reverence, or at 
least there was a tradition in our colleges that 
such was the proper mental attitude to assume. 
So students continued to roll hot cannon balls 
along the corridors, to greet unpopular instruc- 
tors with alternate showers of curses and of 
stones, occasionally to dirk a poor wretch who 
was unnecessarily and intolerably offensive, and 
at the same time to take off their hats and bow 
deeply before these representatives of profound 
knowledge and lofty culture. 

The truth is that the student did not under- 
stand these strange and remarkable though 
simple creatures any more than a mediaeval stu- 
dent understood the physiological system of the 
dodo. Nor, on the other hand, did the profes- 
sor have any very clear or accurate ideas of the 
student. There was little intimacy between the 
two, each feeling that " evil communications cor- 
rupt good manners," and of course there was mu- 
tual misunderstanding. The faculty regarded 
many of the students as hopeless brigands, de- 
spite the fact that in after life very few of them 
were hanged and only a small percentage elected 



64 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

to the legislature. The students regarded the 
members of the faculty as freaks fearfully and 
wonderfully made, unlike anything in heaven 
above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters 
under the earth, themselves therefore not de- 
barred by the commandment from falling down 
and worshiping them, if they so desired. The 
professor's real object in life was a mystery to 
the average student, for of course he didn't actu- 
ally exist for the purpose of purveying the kind 
of instruction which was then common, the sort 
so happily described by Carlyle : " Innumer- 
able dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they 
themselves knew no Language) they crammed 
into us, and called it fostering the growth of the 
mind." 

Only too frequently the instructor was fit only 
for such work. Lacking knowledge of humanity, 
without much interest in the life of the world, 
with only a few drops of red blood sluggishly 
trickling through his veins, he sat in his study, 
slowly drying up, and attempting like the fa- 
mous Wagner to create the new man out of noth- 
ing and in a perfect vacuum. 



FACULTY AND STUDENTS 65 

Of course, it would be false to declare flatly 
that this account is literally true, of all colleges, 
of all faculties, and of all students of that day. 
There were exceptions and many of them; but, 
broadly speaking, the above description is fairly 
accurate. 

To-day conditions are no longer the same. 
Despite the conservatism of faculties and the still 
denser and almost ineluctable conservatism of 
students, the relations between the two have be- 
come much closer and much better. There is, 
to be sure, less formal reverence, but also less 
informal irreverence ; there is something like real 
respect and a much larger measure of liking; 
there is a better knowledge of the instructor's 
intellectual acquirements and certainly less will- 
ingness to take them on trust ; there is more fa- 
miliarity and less contempt on both sides, and a 
completer understanding of the position of each. 
The student has more real interest in the work 
of the university, and in the ideas and the ideals 
for which the instructor stands, or fails to stand. 
At the same time the instructor measures more 
accurately the needs of his students and strives 



66 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

to meet them. In this interest of the student, in 
this attitude of the instructor, we find the price- 
less benefits of the change in spirit which has 
occurred in the last half century. 

Whence has come this change? One authority 
tells us that the introduction of the elective sys- 
tem is responsible; another insists that it is the 
growth of athletics which has permitted the stu- 
dent body to work itself out of " the gall of bit- 
terness and the bonds of iniquity " without the 
slaughter of the faculty. Others again labori- 
ously but simply explain this state of affairs as 
being only one small result of our general ad- 
vance in goodness. The truth is that the expla- 
nations, excepting only the last, are not inclusive 
enough. 

The reasons for a better status between teacher 
and student are multifarious and complex, some 
palpable, others so concealed that it would be 
extremely rash to pretend to know them all, 
without a profounder study than perhaps the 
subject deserves. We shall have to be content 
not " to pluck the heart of Hamlet's mystery out.'' 



FACULTY AND STUDENTS 67 

Nevertheless many of the causes of the change 
can be noted. 

Among these may be mentioned first and fore- 
most the broader interests of the modern univer- 
sity. We are no longer content to infuse into the 
youthful mind only Latin, Greek, mathematics, 
and a few allied subjects. A multitude of other 
subjects has been added, and with the addition of 
each has come a widening of the horizon, a deep- 
ening of interest in life, and a consequent mu- 
tual attraction of the hitherto opposing masses 
— faculty and the student body. The addition 
of literature, political economy, history, and like 
subjects to the college curriculum has been of 
enormous service in this process. Similarly, the 
introduction of the purely scientific studies has 
had the same results to an even greater degree. 
All these subjects demand constant research, con- 
stant criticism, and research and criticism must 
be undertaken by the student and instructor to- 
gether. A broadening of interest, a better under- 
standing of each other, a closer intimacy, such 
are the results. The old-time enemies have thus 



68 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

learned to know and esteem each other. " The 
man I don't know is the man I don't like." 

The elective system, that remedy for all the 
ills and explanation of all the evils of present-day 
college life, has undoubtedly had an enormous in- 
fluence in bringing together the professor and his 
enemy. It has profoundly modified the methods 
of instruction. It is much more difficult for 
Dryasdust to drone through his exercises now 
that the victim can elect to cut Dryasdust. 
Moreover, the motive of the student for taking 
work has changed. Choice infers judgment of 
some sort, usually poor judgment, to be sure, but 
still judgment ; judgment ought to infer interest, 
and it usually does, though the nature of the in- 
terest will not always bear probing into. In any 
case the student's attitude toward study is 
changed, and as a consequence his attitude 
toward the man in charge of the study. As for 
the instructor, he has been compelled to adopt 
new views as well as new methods. He has set 
himself to getting acquainted with the student, 
or at least to finding out what he is like, what he 
wants, and why he wants it. He has conformed 



FACULTY AND STUDENTS 69 

to the student's demands even when he neglects 
his needs. 

Athletics, too, has had its share in the trans- 
formation. This assertion needs only to be made 
to be accepted. Most faculties are intensely in- 
terested in athletics, some of them with a benevo- 
lent, some with a malevolent interest, but in any 
case interested. Most of the professors, indeed, 
highly favor them, and with these it is only a 
question of the more or less. Many of our teach- 
ing staff have been athletes in their day, many 
more have had the warmer and noisier participa- 
tion in athletics which is characteristic of the 
side lines. All these causes draw the instructor 
and the student closer together, and it cannot be 
doubted, as it is contended, that the modern stu- 
dent gets rid of a good deal of his diabolical 
energy through the media of football, baseball, 
and kindred sports. Intercollegiate competitions, 
largely a result of the athletic spirit, have also 
tended to create a sentiment of solidarity among 
all the members of a university. 

More important still has been the introduction 
of graduate studies. The pursuit of these can be 



70 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

carried on only by the combined effort of teacher 
and pupil, and the result of this community of 
research has been already pointed out. Add to 
this that, when the student has once fairly got 
into his subject, the fact, usually surprising and 
startling to the student, that on that subject he 
knows more than his instructor, that there he is 
the superior and not the inferior soon dawns upon 
him and has a revolutionary tendency. It makes 
him feel that he is on a level with his professor, 
a result of immense importance in determining 
the relation of the two. 

The greater degree of self-government in pres- 
ent-day universities has had an incalculable in- 
fluence in destroying the old antagonistic spirit. 
The faculty is no longer devoted to the duties of 
the police and the justices of the peace, and the 
gain is notable, both for the teacher's self-respect 
and his peace of mind, as well as for the student's 
respect for the erstwhile policeman. The hot 
cannon ball no longer rolls, stones no longer 
crash through the windows of the instructor, and 
innocent tutors are no longer slain by " the young 
barbarian at his play.'' All this is clear gain. 



FACULTY AND STUDENTS 71 

Perhaps no other influence has been so potent in 
bringing this gain to us as this of student self- 
government, and it is only to be wished that such 
self-government might receive a still wider ex- 
tension than hitherto. That it does not is, on 
the whole, the fault of the student body. 

In our own university there are particular 
causes for the excellent spirit which exists be- 
tween the faculty and students. These deserve 
a brief mention. First come the circumstances 
of our founding, which any good Cornellian 
knows and is thankful for. The genius and the 
ideas of Ezra Cornell were all favorable to this 
spirit ; the personality of our first president was 
no less so. One cannot read his autobiography 
without perceiving that from his early youth he 
had noted and deprecated the hostile and unnat- 
ural attitude of teacher toward student, and of 
student toward teacher. It is just as apparent, 
too, that he was from the first resolved that no 
such relations should exist here, and that to him 
was due in large measure our unusual freedom 
from this spirit even in those days when it was 
far from being exorcised elsewhere. 



72 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

Fraternities, too, have "done the state some 
service '' in this direction, and so also have some 
of the other societies and organizations at Cor- 
nell. 

Yet, after all is said, it would be vain to pre- 
tend that the ideal conditions have been yet 
achieved. Any student will tell you as much, 
and so will any college president. The most diffi- 
cult problem, the authorities declare, is to keep 
the faculty in close touch with the students. 
Most difficult, yet most desirable. How it is to 
be done is not the purpose of this paper to tell. 
Here is a field for discussion open to the pro- 
foundest wit and the broadest knowledge, and 
fortunate will be the man who discovers a solu- 
tion for this problem. 



ANENT BONFIRES 

By George Lincoln Burr 

SPEAKING of traditions, there is one so old, 
even at Cornell, as almost to be respectable 
— if a tradition, the cast-off clothes of an idea, 
can ever be respectable. I mean the bonfire when 
the freshmen burn their caps. 

True, it was not caps we used to burn. In my 
day it was books. Well do I remember that 
weird procession, at the end of our freshman year, 
when at dead of night, the engineers in the van, 
we cremated on the campus that nightmare of 
their waking hours, Weisbach's Mechanics. But 
when, a decade later, I came back to Cornell from 
my studies abroad, it was no longer the engineers 
who led or Weisbach which was their victim. It 
was the freshmen as a whole who now wreaked 
their revenge on that all-too-learned algebra 
concocted for their special needs by Professors 

73 



74 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

Oliver, Wait, and Jones — " Gulliver, Fate, and 
Groans,'' as one vindictive undergraduate dared 
to parody their names in that play of " Instructor 
Pratt " which butchered so many of us to make a 
student holiday. 

But it was no new ignominy peculiar to 
Cornell, this of academic cremation. Back to 
the very birth of universities it goes, this glee- 
ful execution of judgment upon the heretic tomes 
whose evil suggestion of progress has tormented 
our peace of mind. True, between those old bon- 
fires and ours there was the difference that the 
faculty then often took a hand, and that then they 
preferred to burn their tormentors before the mis- 
chief was wrought. Surely nobody supposes that 
the mission of a university has always been the 
search of truth. That is only a wild notion of 
these last degenerate days. From time imme- 
morial the usual function of a university has been 
the custody of truth. To receive it unquestioning 
from the fathers, as Heaven through Church and 
State has revealed it, to guard it against all the 
seductions of novelty, though Satan disguise him- 
self as an angel of light, to hand it down intact 



ANENT BONFIRES 75 

to the next generation : this is the time-honored 
ideal of what has loved to call itself education. 
The universities were scarcely in existence be- 
fore, in the thirteenth century, the Pope put into 
their hands the censorship of books. And the 
penalty, as for all heretics, was to be burned — 
burned alive, poor children of the brain. 
" Mangled and burned by the common hangman '' 
ran the sentence of the old French courts. 

Nor were the universities one whit loth to aid 
the executioner. When the printing press was 
born, the University of Cologne, overlooking its 
Rhineland cradle, could not wait, good alma 
noverca^ for those mandates by which mother 
church soon provided everywhere watchful 
guardians for that enfant terrible^ but set up a 
censorship of her own ; and her academic sisters 
were not slow to follow. It was the university 
towns — Paris, Louvain, Liege, Ingolstadt, Leip- 
zig — that presently saw those glorious bonfires 
of the new theology which was to take to itself 
the name of Protestantism. And the Protes- 
tants? Yes, they made some outcry. One Mar- 
tin Luther, in particular, professor in the new 



76 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

University of Wittenberg — new universities 
have every now and then been slow to learn that 
all truth is old — said sharp things : " It is no 
great trick to burn a book which you cannot an- 
swer/' — " If burning books be answering them, 
then the hangman is the best theologian." Brave 
words these, but note the sequel. Already by 
1520 Luther too is fighting the Devil with fire 
— that Devil who likes nothing better, for he 
who fights with fire is the DeviFs volunteer. 
They have burned Luther's books; he will burn 
theirs. Who does not know the summons which 
the Wittenberg students found at daylight on 
that December Monday morning posted on the 
church door which served as bulletin board — 
the boys, of course, had all been up at four for 
Martin Luther's lecture: "Let every man who 
loves the gospel truth be on hand just before 
nine o'clock outside the wall, by the Church of 
Holy Cross, where, in accordance with ancient 
and apostolic custom, the impious books of the 
papal laws and the scholastic philosophy shall 
be burned, since the audacity of the Gospel's foes 
has gone so far as to burn the pious and evan- 



ANENT BONFIRES 77 

gelical books of Luther. Come along, pious and 
studious youth, to this pious and religious spec- 
tacle." 

" Pious and religious spectacle," forsooth : the 
rest is easy to guess. Not five years were up be- 
fore the new university was condemning to the 
fire whatever passed its own Lutheran orthodoxy, 
and by ten it could proudly boast a thorough- 
ness which it had taken its papist rivals cen-/ 
turies to reach. For, in the new state churches 
of Protestantism, the theological faculties must 
be pope and council and university in one. 
Theirs still to burn these paper heretics; and 
cheerily did they fulfill their function, with now 
and then a flesh and blood one thrown in. Oh, 
yes, I know there were rogues among them ; and 
the good, respectable old world has jogged on 
with fewer wild oats because of these intellectual 
policemen. Yet, as one glances down the long 
lists of the censors or through that bibliography 
which a patient German has given us of the books 
condemned to be burned, one wonders if it might 
not better have dared sometimes to be young, even 
at the risk of wild oats. 



78 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

No; wait ! " Young," did I say? Is it youth, 
then, which is tolerant? Are students less con- 
servative than faculties? Ask the records. Al- 
most three years before that bonfire at Witten- 
berg there was another. It was in March of 1518. 
This time it was the affair of the students. The 
book-peddlers had brought to Wittenberg the an- 
swering theses of the indulgence-monger, Tetzel. 
" The students," wrote Luther to a friend, " since 
they are wondrous weary of that old hair-split- 
ting philosophy" — yes, of course — "but most 
eager for the holy Bible," — hm-m, let us hope so 
— " and possibly out of regard for my good-will " 
— he knew his students, after all, this Luther, 
but he might have guessed further — " when they 
found out that the man had come from Halle and 
was sent by Tetzel, forthwith they gathered about 
him and, striking terror into him because he 
dared to bring such things here, some bought cop- 
ies, others snatched them, and the rest of his 
stock, about eight hundred (when they had cir- 
culated a notice to everybody for the cremation 
and the funeral of Tetzel's theses and had come 
together in the square at two o'clock) they 



ANENT BONFIRES 79 

burned.'' Luther deplored it, of course — with 
a twinkle in his eye ; but it is clear enough where 
the notion of that later bonfire came from. And 
that later bonfire : was it not the boys who kept 
it up all day, after Luther and the dons had 
gone home to breakfast? Scarce enough at Wit- 
tenberg must Eck's books and Emser's have been 
by nightfall. Forty years later, as the old re- 
formers were just leaving the stage, there was a 
conference of the leaders of Luther anism. The 
young men, relates that fire-eater Sarcerius, all 
were ready to begin by condemning all the dis- 
senters ; but the old men held back. 

No, no ; if there was a heretic to burn, you may 
be sure the students were there to pile the fag- 
gots and to hoot the victim. Faculties are re- 
actionary enough ; but for sheer, stupid, dyed-in- 
the-wool conservatism, cheerily certain that we 
are the people and that knowledge shall die with 
us and hating everything new because it is new, 
commend me to the undergraduate. The only 
thing in the world more conservative than an Up- 
perclassman is a Sophomore, and the only thing 
more conservative than a Sophomore is a crowd of 



80 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

Sophomores. Freshmen — well, they come to us, 
as everybody knows, with something of the 
verdancy of growth still on them. By the year's 
end they are ripe for complacency and the bon- 
fire. 

And yet I cling to my phrase. If the world 
could but dare to be young ! Young were always 
the fiercest persecutors ; but young, too, were the 
boldest heretics. It is youth which can be gen- 
erous, brave, open-minded, progressive. But 
these are the virtues of men, not of crowds. A 
man may lead a crowd; but men are few. 
Crowds are reactionary, even when they follow 
— there is an inertia of motion as well as of stag- 
nation. A man may be in a crowd, but he is 
not of it. A man can stand alone. 



TAGHKANIC 
By Francis Miles Finch 

ON the brow of the delicate streamlet, 
In the folds of its forest hair, 
I see the gems of a bridal. 
The pearls of a peerless pair. 

The rill of the shadowy woodland 
Kuns to the lake with a spring: 

The Indian maid, Taghkanie, 
Weds the Cayuga King. 

In the shade of the murmuring maple 

Wait, fair girl, at my side. 
Till I lift your wondering lashes 

On the dainty lace of the bride. 

Nearer, your tremulous footstep. 

Yonder the flash of your eye. 
Through the break of the marginal leaflets. 

Where the mist sails up to the sky. 

81 



82 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

You see it : — I know by the color 
That tells me its rose-red tale : 

You see in the frame of the forest 
The lace of the bridal veil. 

Over the rock it is floating, 

Is it woven of diamonds or spray? 

Of molten pearl, or of star-dust? — 
Tell me the fabric, I pray. 

You answer me only with dimples 

Hid in a tinting of rose : 
And the light of your own near bridal 

Under your eye-lid glows. 

The Indian maid, Taghkanic, 
Weds with the Sapphire King: 

But a dearer and daintier bridal 
The bloomings of June shall bring. 



A VIEW OF ATHLETICS * 
By Frank Irvine 

AKE intercollegiate athletic sports beneficial 
to a university and to those who partici- 
pate in them, or are they detrimental? That 
they are essentially beneficial, may be safely as- 
sumed. That they are subject to accidental evils, 
no one will deny. Those who believe that the 
good outweighs the evil, and that on the whole 
such efforts should be encouraged, meet opposi- 
tion of two very different kinds. They are op- 
posed consciously and directly by men who per- 
ceive only the abuses, and who would, if possi- 
ble, destroy the entire system. They are opposed 
unconsciously and indirectly by those devotees 
of athletic sports who hold false ideals, who mag- 
nify their importance, and who distort their pur- 

* This article was written for the October, 1908, issue of the 
OoBNEix Eba, in view of conditions which made the problem 
of athletics an acute one. The problem is hardly less im- 
portant, however, in college life to-day. 

83 



84 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

poses. The latter are those who really imperil 
athletic sports. But for them the former would 
not exist. If at Cornell the avowed enemies of 
intercollegiate athletics are few in number and 
not extreme, it is because on the whole the stu- 
dents have a just sense of the proportion, purpose, 
and value of such sports, and because their 
abuses are thereby minimized. 

The objection to intercollegiate contests most 
frequently voiced is that they enlist the active 
efforts of only a very small proportion of the 
students. This is true not only of athletic con- 
tests, but to a much greater extent of intercol- 
legiate debates. If the whole purpose of such 
contests were the physical exercise afforded the 
players, the objection would have greater weight. 
The physical development of those who play on 
the teams is a minor, and, perhaps, a negligible 
consideration. The interest aroused in outdoor 
sports, and stimulus afforded by their exemplifi- 
cation by experts, tend to the general participa- 
tion of students in some form of healthful sport. 
Had we no 'Varsity baseball team we should 
have fewer or no " scrub " games such as occupy 



A VIEW OF ATHLETICS 85 

the playground and other fields so continuously 
in the spring. And, after all, the case is not so 
bad from the standpoint of direct participation. 
While only the few best " make " the 'Varsity, 
good results to the many who try, and especially 
to those who go through the season on the 
" scrubs.'' It is not only the eight men in the 
'Varsity shell at Poughkeepsie who row. 
Twenty-seven men actually take part in the races 
there. Many times that number row during 
much of the season. About five hundred and 
fifty men worked for the track team at some time 
during a recent year, while the squads for base- 
ball and football are likewise large. If to these 
be added those who participate in like manner in 
the minor sports, it will be found that a goodly 
portion of the undergraduates have received their 
physical exercise under these peculiarly stimulat- 
ing influences. 

Then it must above all be borne in mind that 
with the unusually diversified work and interests 
prevailing at Cornell, almost the only common 
ground upon which we meet, certainly the most 
immediate and powerful unifying force, is our 



86 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

interest in university contests. For lack of 
room, if for no other reason, it is impossible to 
bring all the students together for any other pur- 
pose. A true university convocation can be held 
only on the athletic field, and there only in fact 
is there anything approaching such a gathering. 
Without such common interests Cornell would 
in sentiment be only a number of separate col- 
leges. 

It is of the utmost importance that we should 
have a just sense of the relations between sport 
and the serious work of the university. The 
athlete should be first of all a student. Inter- 
collegiate contests become mischievous to the 
extent that they detract from the serious prepara- 
tion for business and citizenship for which the 
university exists and for which students resort 
to it. They become intolerable if they attract 
to the university in considerable number men 
who do not come as true students, or if they 
transform students in any number into profes- 
sional athletes. 

On the whole the writer believes that athletic 
sports make for better scholarship, and he is 



A VIEW OF ATHLETICS 87 

sure that they make for better conduct among 
the undergraduates. It is less fair to answer this 
assertion by pointing to the occasional athlete 
who cannot or will not perform his university 
work than it is to enforce it by pointing to the 
case, happily not infrequent, of the athlete who 
is conspicuously successful. For a man to suc- 
ceed in athletics he must keep himself busy. The 
loafer is as objectionable on the field as in the 
classroom. The man whose attention is absorbed 
in athletics and who is consequently dropped 
would in the absence of such interest be diverted 
by something much worse and would meet as 
bad a fate. Still it must be remembered that 
athletic contests have unusual allurements. It 
behooves each man to guard himself closely and 
to see to it that he does not lose his perspective. 
It behooves the undergraduates as a class to in- 
sist that their chosen representatives on the field 
maintain a good standing on the hill. The man 
who is lost to the team because he neglects his 
work should receive the same treatment as the 
man who sacrifices his university by breaking 
training, evading practice, or shirking in a game. 



88 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

After all, the answer to the question at the 
beginning of this paper depends chiefly upon the 
spirit with which the sports are conducted. To 
win is the immediate object of every contest. To 
win at any price or by any methods is the object 
to be shunned. Intercollegiate games should be 
friendly contests conducted fairly and with good 
temper. Evil and the appearance of evil must 
both be avoided. A team having among its mem- 
bers men who are ineligible under either the let- 
ter or the spirit of the rules, men who are stu- 
dents in name alone, and who attend a university 
only because of the opportunity afforded to take 
part in contests, a team prepared to take any 
undue advantage of an opponent — such a team 
disgraces an institution and degrades the sport. 
It is the aim at Cornell to present teams com- 
posed of genuine students and genuine gentle- 
men. It is our aim to treat our opponents who 
meet us here as our guests, to beat them if we can 
do so fairly and honorably, but in any event so to 
bear ourselves that we part with reciprocal re- 
spect. Defeats must not make us "knockers,'' 
nor victories make us bullies. 



A VIEW OF ATHLETICS 89 

Finally, the spirit of true sport and the main- 
tenance of a just attitude toward our competi- 
tors, our teams, and our university demand that 
our games shall be free from gambling. The man 
who " supports the team " by wagering on the 
result of games degrades the men on the team 
to the level of game cocks. He deprives himself 
of the right to rejoice honestly in victory and of 
the power to accept defeat with self-respect and 
good temper. 



THE UNIVERSITY AS A FRATERNITY 
By John L. Elliott 

IS a college education worth while? 
Despite the enormous enlargement of the 
material resources, and the ever-increasing num- 
ber of students in the universities, this question 
is still being put by a great number of thinking 
people. 

The discussion usually centers around the 
question of culture and of technical training, 
but there is another plea for the college which 
applies to all branches of the university alike, 
and that is the benefit which comes to the student 
from fine associations. 

The value of association is so commonly re- 
cognized that many, perhaps, may think it is not 
necessary to emphasize it further, but college 
friendship, even if trite, is surely no mean theme, 
nor is it commonly recognized how much the 
world owes to the young men who have united to 
achieve some fine purpose; and not infrequently 

90 



UNIVERSITY AS A FRATERNITY 91 

groups of university students have profoundly 
affected the history of their time. Less than half 
a century ago Arnold Toynbee was the center of 
an Oxford group who were discussing social ques- 
tions, and out of their life together, in large part, 
grew the settlement movement, which to-day does 
at least something to ameliorate the tenement- 
house life of our large cities. 

In the early part of the last century the or- 
ganization of German students known as the 
Burschenschaften was among the most important 
political organizations in that country and in 
Austria. These young men accomplished so 
much that we read their history with amazement 
and wonder. It was they who from 1815 to 1848 
kept up the fight for constitutional government, 
and it is to her student organizations that Ger- 
many largely owes the protection of her liberty 
through constitutional government. True it is 
that these student groups often engaged in en- 
terprises which were quixotic, but it is also true 
that they, more than any others, in Germany, 
kept the torch of liberty burning, and that they 
played a great part in a noble movement. 



92 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

About the same time another great national 
struggle was begun by young men which has not 
yet been completed. It was from among the 
young officers returning from the Napoleonic 
wars that there came a noble struggle for liberty 
in Russia. This fight, beginning almost one hun- 
dred years ago, is still continuing, and the jail 
and mine tell with what heroism and fortitude 
the battle is being waged. 

It was the young men who began the some- 
what ill-advised, and yet righteous, movement of 
the Chartists in England. These young Chart- 
ists had been stirred into action by the revela- 
tions of the facts in regard to child labor and of 
the condition of the women workers in the coal 
mines of England. 

These few examples are taken from a vast num- 
ber that might be cited by way of indicating what 
has been attempted and accomplished in times 
not far distant from our own. 

It seems as though, to have the best kind of 
association among students, three things are 
necessary. A really great purpose, an older man 
who can act as adviser, and at least one in the 



UNIVEESITY AS A FKATERNITY 93 

group who has the courage and the finely touched 
nature which fits him to be a leader. The first 
of these three essentials may be readily ad- 
mitted, but it may not be commonly recog- 
nized how important is the second, the older ad- 
viser. 

In talking with students about the university 
life of to-day, it sometimes seems as though there 
were a place for every one and everything in that 
life except the faculty, who sometimes figure in 
the light of a necessary evil, and as though they 
were hardly to be reckoned among the essentials. 
It is not to be forgotten that Toynbee's friend and 
biographer was Professor Jowett; that Fichte 
and Schleiermacher, Arndt and Jahn, were 
chosen as examples and leaders by the Burschen- 
schaften. 

Young men have the vision and enthusiasm and 
the power of action but not the firm intellectual 
grasp which is necessary for the continued fol- 
lowing out of a purpose. However, the young 
man who is a leader is necessary, for it is always 
the example rather than the word which stirs to 
action. 



94 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

Now, how does all this apply to the university 
life of to-day? 

The associations of the college man with others 
in the university are good natured and friendly, 
but hardly of a kind which call out the best that 
is in a man; and if I am not misled by memory 
and observation, the three main topics of con- 
versation among college students are athletics, 
the personalities of the faculty, and girls. All 
of them good themes, but not even all of them 
taken together are enough to furnish the best 
basis of union for friendships and activities 
among students. The interest in individual 
achievements is too likely to predominate, the 
best things in the university likely to go un- 
perceived, and the greatest value of student as- 
sociation to be unrealized. I think it is possi- 
ble to have a finer type of university work and 
life by having the students take greater interest 
in each other's work and life. 

In many of the best and most famous schools of 
the world the chief value comes from the fine, 
helpful life which those who are learning have 



UNIVERSITY AS A FRATERNITY 95 

with each other. If you ask a student of archi- 
tecture returning from the Beaux Arts in Paris 
why it is necessary for him to spend years abroad, 
what it is that he has gotten, he is very likely 
to tell you that it has not been so much the direct 
teaching of the professors as it is what he has 
gotten from the older students in the school. As 
most of us are aware, the atelier in which each 
man registers is a purely voluntary organization. 
Each of them secures a " patron " from the 
faculty as teacher who comes at stated intervals 
to give criticism and instruction, but it is not 
only the patron, it is the older student in the 
atelier y the " ancient '^ as he is called, who makes 
years of study abroad of value to our young ar- 
chitects. 

The same thing holds true to a certain extent 
in this country. Wherever particularly good 
work is being done in any school one finds that 
it is not alone the excellence of the teaching, but 
the spirit among the students, which is the help- 
ful and inspiring part of the institution. This 
fraternity life among all the students is one of 



96 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

the greatest assets of any university, as indeed 
it is one of the greatest assets of any institution 
or movement. 

One of the reasons that athletics take so deep 
a hold is that the management is so largely in the 
hands of the men themselves. There is a chance 
for personal initiative and to a considerable ex- 
tent self-government is practiced in athletics. 
People are more interested in what they them- 
selves do than in anything else in the world. The 
older and more experienced man is interested 
enough in the success of the athletics of his uni- 
versity to take the trouble to coach the younger. 
There is no reason why this should not to some 
degree exist in other departments. The fresh- 
man who is just beginning to write for the col- 
lege paper naturally regards the editor-in-chief of 
that paper with considerable interest, just as the 
freshman trying to make the crew is sure to have 
a regard for the stroke in the 'varsity boat. Men 
who have succeeded in any branch of their col- 
lege work are sure to have a large personal in- 
fluence among those who are just beginning their 
work along that line. The pity is that there are 



UNIVERSITY AS A FRATERNITY 97 

so few amateur coaches in anything except ath- 
letics. The finest spirit of fraternity and of 
friendship can only rest on some deep social prin- 
ciple. Mutual helpfulness in work, the further- 
ing of the aims of a common cause, is surely one 
of these principles. 

But there is yet a larger and deeper basis for 
the fraternity spirit in the whole university, just 
as there is a higher aim for a man than success 
in his mere work. It has become more and more 
the custom for the nation to look to the pro- 
fessors of the universities for assistance. The 
faculty of Cornell has rendered distinguished 
service to the United States. In many of the 
universities, particularly those directly con- 
nected with the States in which they are situated, 
this is true. The University of Wisconsin is one 
of the great factors in administering the rail- 
roads and the other public affairs of that State. 
The needs and the welfare of the public, the 
State, the nation, are the real basis for college 
life, thought, and discussion. 

Too often a man goes to college with the idea of 
fitting himself to earn money or solely for the 



98 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

purpose of having a good time. The training 
of citizens should be, to no small extent, the 
purpose of the university, and the country needs 
to-day, not alone men trained as engineers, law- 
yers, and doctors, but also men able to further 
the ends of our American democracy, men who 
have the vision of what this democracy is to be, 
men who have had the practice and the skill 
which comes from dealing with men. I will take 
upon myself to say that democracy is but little 
understood even in this country, and none of us 
believes that it is fully understood by any of us 
in all its significance. 

To those who observe the life and government 
of large cities there come from time to time 
ghastly realizations. Read down the list of the 
Republican and Tammany leaders, the men who 
are in direct control of the people, and if you 
know their records how do you feel about some 
of the phases of democratic government? Of 
course, from the moral and political standpoint 
the record of Wall Street and some of the cor- 
porations is no better. 

Out of this situation only the expert, who is 



UNIVERSITY AS A FEATERNITY 99 

usually a college man, can save us. But he must 
be not only great as a craftsman and expert in 
his particular line, but he must also be democra- 
tic and social in his aims. The man who has 
been a social force in his university is the man 
most likely to be a social force in any community 
in which he lives. 

There is no training like experience. A man 
must experiment in the narrower field before he 
can be of influence in the greater. I say ex- 
periment because it is unfortunately true that 
we still are experimenting in public life. The 
principles of private morality which we have 
now have been known for centuries, but many 
principles of public morality are just coming into 
consciousness. 

The art and the principles of living and work- 
ing together are surely imperfectly understood 
by most of us, and what nobler ends can the uni- 
versity have than teaching this art and these 
principles? The professors and the heads of 
departments are those most vitally in touch with 
the greatest things of life and with the nation. 
The younger members of the faculty are those 



100 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

who have the most personal contact with the 
student body. The upperclassmen and the lead- 
ers in the student body have their own field of 
influence. It is just the value of this influence 
of the upperclassmen in particular, but of all 
students in general, which I have in mind. The 
man who has progressed successfully has an op- 
portunity to render peculiar service to those 
working about him. He can do some things that 
the faculty cannot do, just because he is a mem- 
ber of the student body. He is not a teacher, 
but a leader. The fraternal relations come more 
easily to him and he can render important service 
to the university and to the larger community 
by fostering the spirit and making clear the vi- 
sion of American democracy which can only be 
realized through an enlarged and deepened ex- 
perience of fraternal relations. 



THEN AND NOW * 
By Gold win Smith 

EIGHTY years ago in an old house of an old 
English town, a little boy was lying in bed 
listening to the Christmas chimes, perhaps to the 
last call of the watchman on the street, and look- 
ing at the servant lighting the fire with the flint, 
steel, and tinder box of the olden time. Since 
that morning, what changes! The main storm 
of the French Kevolution may be said to have 
ended at Waterloo. But there has been a series 
of after-blasts which has changed the political 
face of all Europe, and is now apparently ex- 
tending itself to the hitherto stagnant East. We 
may set down in some measure to the same ac- 
count the overthrow by civil war of the same 
power in the United States. The impelling force 
everywhere has been democracy, generally tri- 
umphant, advancing to rule apparently even 

* Published in 1908. 

101 



102 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

in Russia, and in England completely possessed 
of the legislative seat of real power, the House 
of Commons, though a remnant of aristocratic 
control still retains a precarious existence in the 
House of Lords. The United States, now, in- 
stead of being the vanguard of democracy, might 
almost be said to be its rearguard, the power of 
its Presidency and its Senate making its Con- 
stitution in some respects the most conserva- 
tive of the set. 

Not less but rather more momentous than the 
political movement, and fraught with ultimate 
change, is the advance of science, which in two 
or three generations has been almost miraculous 
and has carried mechanical invention with it. 
Mechanical invention with steamship, rail, and 
telegraph is bringing the nations into far closer 
communication and making of them, in some 
respects, almost one commonwealth. Even this 
movement in India is due in no small measure to 
the substitution for the long voyage round the 
Cape of the short route by the Suez Canal. Mag- 
ical has been the change in locomotion. About 



THEN AND NOW 103 

half a century ago Greville, as he tells us in his 
Memoirs, was traveling by the first built of the 
English railroads. He shudders at hearing that 
an engine driver had been going at the perilous 
pace of forty-five miles an hour, but is happy to 
hear that the man had been dismissed by the 
company. Emigration has now been made so 
easy that the labor markets are becoming fused. 
The demarcations of national character can 
hardly fail to become less sharp. Language 
must always be a boundary. But even this, com- 
merce and industry being almost always bilin- 
gual, is becoming a less sharp division. 

All nations eat the fruits of all climes. That 
little boy would have to grow to middle age or 
beyond before he would taste a banana. The ex- 
pansion of commerce in all lines has been im- 
mense. The humble cake shop in old Keading at 
which that little boy bought cakes has now be- 
come the great biscuit firm of Huntley & Palmer, 
employing thousands of hands. In one way in- 
vention unhappily has been retrograde. It has 
always been increasing the construction of new 



104 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

instruments of war, the incentives to enmity be- 
tween nations, or the appeal to violence and de- 
struction. 

The growth of physical science or the increase 
of its influence over the mind have had most mo- 
mentous effects in another sphere. Those Christ- 
mas chimes, when the child heard them, spoke 
to all hearts alike both of the home and of the 
Church. To not a few they now speak of the 
home alone. This change has come rapidly and 
startlingly over the intellectual world. The 
child when still a youth heard a great professor 
of physical science struggling to reconcile geol- 
ogy with Genesis. Now he reads the work of a 
religious writer such as Gladstone, struggling to 
reconcile Genesis with geology. Let the evolu- 
tionist, however, remember two things : first, that 
evolution cannot have evolved itself; secondly, 
that, unlike the brutes, humanity, as we have 
been here noting, advances, and that we cannot 
tell what the end will be ; whether it may not be 
the final ascendancy of the spiritual over the ma- 
terial in man. Man, let the evolutionist remem- 
ber, advances and rises. The beast does not. 



THEN AND NOW 105 

Meanwhile all truth is revelation, all Christian 
sentiment is religion. There is religion of this 
sort not a little in Dickens' " Christmas Carol." 



THE SPIEIT OF THE UNIVERSITY 
By Hugh Black 

MEN can live in an institution like this and 
never realize its essential spirit, never 
bring out into consciousness the things it really 
stands for. This probably explains some of the 
false judgments passed on our universities, such 
as that they are irreligious. As a matter of 
fact if we analyze the true nature and purpose 
of our education, we will be assured that noth- 
ing in American life is so inspired and informed 
with true religion. 

The university represents the spirit of truth 
and the love of truth. This is something more 
than the acquirement of information, and more 
than the recognition of facts. Each science 
works by limiting its field, by differentiation. 
But science itself is not made perfect till it re- 
lates itself to the whole round of truth and con- 

106 



THE SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSITY 107 

tributes to the complete life of the world. This 
is simply the religious ideal which gathers up 
the broken arcs into a perfect round. 

The university also represents the spirit of co- 
operation. All of us fall heir in some measure 
to the fruits of this. The friendships of college 
will be to many a rich and precious heritage. 
Even in play everything worth while is gained by 
team-work. We learn the value of holding to- 
gether, and that singly we can do and be nothing. 
Our group-work in study teaches us the same 
lesson. We build on each other's work. And 
through it all we learn obedience to law. 

The university represents the spirit of service. 
If we are the privileged class in the democracy, 
it is not for our own sake, and we must learn the 
penalty of privilege. The university serves the 
State; and its members must serve the common 
weal. Where else should we look for unselfish 
service and devoted leadership? Men are chosen 
to receive the great boon of the higher education 
that they may give back in the highest spirit of 
service. 



108 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

These are all the marks of true religion, and 
the religious view of life means consecration to 
these high ends. 



COLLEGE MEN IN NEWSPAPER WORK 
By Arthur Brisbane 

THE newspaper does for a nation and for the 
whole world what speech does for the in- 
dividual. 

The Homo Alalus that college boys read about 
was, as a man, what a nation without newspapers 
would be as a nation. 

Men that could not speak to each other were 
brutal, and they talked with rocks and clubs. 
Nations that have no highly developed free press 
are speechless nations, and they are brutal — 
Russia, and China, for instance. 



Newspaper work, if it were what it should be, 
would be the greatest work in the world, and the 
ambitious man would think of no other. There 
could be no greater work than talking every day 
to millions. 

The newspaper editor who can write what men 
will read has in his hands powerful weapons — 

109 



110 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

suggestion and repetition. One read by millions 
of Ms fellows can at least decide on what subject 
the millions shall think — although he cannot de- 
cide what their thoughts shall be. 



The newspaper editorial takes the place of the 
public square of twenty-five centuries ago. As 
all the citizens met in the public square, dis- 
cussed their grievances, planned remedies, and 
opposed laws and men unpopular, so one hundred 
millions of Americans meet every morning and 
evening in another public square — the editorial 
and the news columns of the newspaper. They 
hear the same news, think along the same lines, 
and are as closely united in action as though 
they were meeting and discussing face to face 
daily. Without the newspapers, imperfect as 
they are, democratic government would be im- 
possible. 

The man who in the future shall do the really 
great newspaper work of the world will be the 
greatest democratic leader that the world has 
ever known — one ruling by argument, persua- 
sion, and the power of truth. 



COLLEGIANS IN NEWSPAPER WORK 111 

Young men ask, " Does college work fit us for 
newspaper work? " It does, if thej do their 
college work well. Any kind of work thoroughly 
done helps a man in newspaper work. For any 
kind of work thoroughly done accustoms the 
mind to concentrated effort and strengthens the 
machine that must do the newspaper man's work. 

A newspaper man may succeed without the 
foundation of a thorough education. The most 
successful newspaper men have done so. That is 
because a great majority of all men have no col- 
lege education and the ablest men in every line 
always come out of the great majority. 

The practical newspaper worker would say, 
perhaps, that the man who stays at college until 
he is twenty-three or twenty -four has lost three or 
four years that would have been more valuable to 
him in a newspaper office than at college. It 
depends upon what the man does in the four 
years — whether at college or in journalism. 



Work at a first-class college or university con- 
scientiously attended to is good preparation for 
newspaper work, but only preparation. The dif - 



112 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

ference is great between knowing about what 
other human beings have done in the past and 
playing your part in the work that human beings 
are doing in the present. 

This the young man realizes when he tries to 
utilize in newspaper work the knowledge, self- 
control, energy stored up in youth. 



Editorial writers should remember that read- 
ers want to know not what the writer thinks, but 
what the reader thinks. 

If you want to succeed as a newspaper man, 
you must interpret your readers to them- 
selves. A crying baby wants the nurse to find 
out what is the matter with the baby — not what 
is the matter with the nurse. 

The public wants to know what is the matter 
with itself. What it thinks, what it feels, what it 
wants — not what the editor thinks or feels. 

And to be successful newspaper men, you must 
live in the brain of the public and tell the public 
what that public brain is saying. 

It can't tell itself. 



COLLEGIANS IN NEWSPAPEE WORK 113 

The newspaper man becomes less valuable nine 
times out of ten as he becomes more familiar with 
his work — and for this reason. The value of a 
newspaper man's work depends upon the 
strength of the impression that events make upon 
him, and upon his ability to convey that impres- 
sion in what he writes. The longer the ordinary 
man continues to see, the less he feels. In ordi- 
nary lines of professional w^ork diminished emo- 
tion is not a detriment, but a help. 

A young doctor cuts off a leg from a living 
creature for the first time and suffers torments 
— his impressions are vivid. 

Ten years later he cuts off a leg with no emo- 
tion whatever, doing his work carefully, but 
thinking perhaps of the golf game in the 
afternoon. And he is a better doctor than in the 
days when he felt emotion. 

When the young reporter sees his first " elec- 
trocution," describes his first great labor strike 
or fire, he is deeply impressed, feels strongly, and 
writes " a good story." Ten years later, in nine 
cases out of ten, he is like the doctor cutting off 
the leg. He feels little and then he is no longer 



114 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATEKS 

a good newspaper man. For no man can suc- 
cessfully pretend to feel what he doesn't feel. 
He may not see the difference, and his editor 
may not see the difference, but the man who reads 
the newspaper will see the difference. Sincerity 
is visible. 



Another problem for the newspaper man is 
this : 

He must make his reputation afresh every day. 
The lawyer of fifty lives perhaps on the work that 
he did at thirty; that work brought him clients 
whom he keeps. 

The doctor at fifty lives on the patients gath- 
ered about him in his youth and vigor — not so, 
the newspaper man. If he cannot do to-day what 
he did ten years ago or twenty years ago, he is 
not wanted to-day. The newspaper man in that 
respect is even more unfortunate than the actor. 
If the actor loses power, if the singer loses his 
voice, the public will still hear with pleasure an 
old favorite, and the advertising of the name has 
value. Not so with the newspaper man. When 



COLLEGIANS IN NEWSPAPER WORK 115 

lie can no longer act or sing — in his line of work 
— his day is done. 



However, newspaper work is the best work — 
since the greatest thing that a man can do is to 
deal with millions of others. Newspaper power 
is the great power — for it is the power that 
shapes and directs the thoughts of men. And 
there is no power but thought. Newspaper work, 
though it may not lead to great newspaper suc- 
cess or great financial reward, is the most useful 
school of experience. The young man who goes 
to work as a reporter — and that is the only way 
to begin — who studies life, takes care of him- 
self, keeps out of temptation and all forms of 
nonsense, is attending a real life college of the 
greatest possible value. 



STUDENTS NEED EXPOSURE TO THE 
SOCIAL FACTS OF OUR TIME 

By John R. Mott 

WE hear much in these days emphasizing 
the fact that the students going forth 
from our universities are needed to help solve 
the most pressing problems of our generation — 
the social problems. It is well that this need 
is recognized. The converse aspect of the sub- 
ject, however, needs quite as much emphasis. 
Why do the universities need to be exposed to 
the serious social facts and demands of our time, 
and why should students in their undergraduate 
days study the social question and engage in 
social service? 

The universities need to come into intelligent 
and sympathetic touch with the social problems 
and activities in order to help to counteract and 
overcome some of the gravest perils of modern 
college life; for example, the dangers resulting 

116 



EXPOSURE TO THE SOCIAL FACTS 117 

from the increasing luxury and extravagance, 
the growing love of selfish pleasure, and the 
tendency to softness which characterizes so many 
colleges ; the perils of subtle forms of selfishness, 
necessarily accentuated by the very process of 
self -culture ; the marked development of class 
spirit and a consequent weakening of the spirit of 
democracy and true brotherhood; the danger of 
becoming too academic and too critical in atti- 
tude and spirit. The students of our day need 
to be led to stand before the stern facts of social 
injustice and neglect. They need to confront 
tasks vast enough to call out and exercise the 
energies of their hearts as well as of their minds, 
absorbing enough to emancipate them from them- 
selves, tragic enough to startle them from their 
theorizing habit of thought into reality. 

Stress should be laid on the point that the 
students of the university need to concern them- 
selves vitally with the cause of social progress in 
order to develop lives of reality. It is dangerous 
to grow in the knowledge of the needs of men and 
of the principles underlying true social progress 
and not to give expression to one's growing con- 



118 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

victions and feelings by seeking to do all in one's 
power to help meet these needs. Not to do so 
tends to develop an untrue character and an 
unresponsive nature. 

Participation in social study and service is 
essential to the realization of the highest ob- 
jective of education — and that is not so much 
personal betterment as public service. What 
gives the students the right to stand in the high- 
est place? Noblesse oblige. We may retain the 
place of leadership only as we recognize that we 
have a service to render. 



THE ROAD OF LIFE 
By Martin W. Sampson 

1WALK the road with comrades three, 
My Love and Joy and Pain : 
So long as Love keeps step with me, 
I scorn the other twain. 

And yet we four together pace, 

And if Pain lag behind, 
Joy urges, " Halt ! my brother's place 

No one may vacant find.'' 

And if Joy loiter in the rear. 

Pain cries, " No farther go ! 
My brother's place is by me here; 

Wait, though his step be slow." 

We walk the road as comrades four, 

Love, Joy, and Pain, and I ; 
E'en Love would walk with me no more, 

Save Joy and Pain were nigh. 

119 



A NECESSITY TO CULTURE 
By Norman Hapgood 

EDUCATION is not the same thing as cul- 
ture. A man may know a great deal about 
one thing, or about many things, and yet be by 
no means a cultivated man. A cultivated man is 
one who sees life in a well-trained, well-balanced, 
illuminated way, distinguished by familiarity 
with the thoughts about the universe left by the 
great thinkers of the past and with their inspired 
expressions. A man who knows only one sub- 
ject, only one country, and only one century is 
likely to be parochial in the quality of his mind. 
The cultivated man is interested in the past, the 
present, the future. He sees, as the Latin motto 
of one college puts it, before, behind, and all 
around. Thus he sees events, ambitions, ideals, 
and accomplishments in perspective. The man 
who does not in college acquire or develop the 
habit of reading great books fails to receive the 

120 



A NECESSITY TO CULTUEE 121 

best that those years of leisure, isolation, and 
opportunity can give. If a young graduate 
should come to me for a job I should wish to 
know many things about him ; does he have com- 
mon sense, keenness, interest in present occur- 
rences, application; but the thing I should wish 
most of all to know is, does he have an intimate 
acquaintance with a number of great men — be 
they Greek, English, Koman, German, French, 
American — and does he enjoy keeping up his 
intimacy with their lives and thoughts. 



HILLS 
By F. Dana Burnet 

1HAVE remembered the hills through all my 
street, 
Though life press close, and Sorrow brush my 
hand, 
Still I have kept my last horizons sweet 
With all that memory of a lifted land. 

Safe from the years my windows hold them still, 
Far citadels from whence a glory streams! 

Upon their heights my spirit goes athrill 
And in my heart are old forgotten dreams. 

You may look out and see them in the dawn, 
Their cowls thrust back, and crimson in their 
dress ; 

For you are young, and splendidly withdrawn, 
And life has still its golden distances. 

122 



HILLS 123 

But I have walked a street with straining crowds, 
With surging men who would not say their 
names ; 
We were no more than dust and dreams and 
shrouds, 
And dress and gold and little, passing fames. 

And some there were who did not lift their eyes, 
From the dun, bitter highway where we trod; 

But I was rich! Against the distant skies 
I saw the hill that raised my world to God ! 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES AND STUDIOUS 
ACTIVITIES 

By Jacob Gould Schurman 

A MAN is more than Ms work. Wherever, 
therefore, human beings come together to 
engage in work, other interests spring up, find 
expression, and receive attention. We say that 
the good citizen is the man who not only does 
faithfully his daily work, but who gives some 
care also to the interests of the community in 
which he lives and of the State and nation to 
which he belongs. Some men and women de- 
vote more time to these public subjects than 
others. The man who neglects them altogether 
is branded as self -centered and selfish. The man 
who pursues them to the neglect of his own 
proper work will find it difficult to secure, to 
hold permanently, a position in the economic 
system of production and distribution. Some- 
where a line must be drawn between the two 

124 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES 125 

groups of competing claims. There is a happy 
mean, if men can only find it. 

What takes place in the State on a large scale 
finds its counterpart also in the university. The 
university is primarily a place of study. As an 
institution, study is what justifies its existence. 
But when young men and w^omen congregate in 
an institution of learning, they quickly discover 
that they have interests outside the classroom 
and apart from hours which they reserve for in- 
tellectual work. The great majority of these in- 
terests are entirely proper and worthy of cultiva- 
tion, while some of them are preeminently im- 
portant. To the latter class belong solicitude for 
the name and fame of the university, and all ef- 
forts which tend to promote a healthful democra- 
tic and noble spirit in the academic community. 
And, generally speaking, Cornell University 
has been blest with an undergraduate body which 
has been jealous of the reputation of the univer- 
sity, and zealous in the advancement of its high- 
est welfare. Such a spirit is not only commend- 
able in itself, but invaluable to the university. 
It has been found as our universities increase in 



126 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

numbers that the maintenance of their good name 
devolves more and more largely upon the stu- 
dents themselves. 

I do not think that such public spirit on the 
part of an undergraduate need absorb any large 
portion of his time. But I recognize and empha- 
size the fact that the time thus spent is of ex- 
ceeding importance to the university. And I 
am very desirous that our students, from the 
freshmen to the seniors and graduates, should 
realize vividly the fact that just as a community 
or a State in a democratic country is what the 
citizens make it, so, in a university democracy, 
the students largely give the university its tone 
and fix its standards and make its reputation in 
the world. And I appeal to the undergraduates 
to see to it that they enable our university to 
realize its high ideal, to do well the work for 
which it is established, and to maintain a repu- 
tation which shall make it an ornament and an 
honor to the country. 

I have said that this devotion on the part of 
undergraduates to the university need not make 
any large or extensive demands upon their time. 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES 127 

The main thing is that every student shall have a 
just conception of the seriousness and dignity of 
his work. When each student is animated by 
such a spirit, little public action on the part of 
the student community as a whole is called for. 
Occasionally, however, it may become necessary. 
Occasionally, that is to say, the ideals and stand- 
ards of the university may need reassertion and 
enforcement on the part of the student body. 
And, just as in the State, this situation calls for 
courage and patriotism. It is easy to drift with 
the crowd. By drifting, standards of life and 
of institutions may be insensibly lowered. The 
good citizens are men who keep their ideals 
bright and who summon the public to paths in 
which they may be realized. Among students, 
too, there is need of such vision, courage, and 
patriotism on behalf of the university. I appeal 
to our student body to give us this spirit in am- 
ple measure at Cornell. Nothing else is so val- 
uable for the institution. Land, buildings, en- 
dowments, are indeed necessary instrumentali- 
ties of a modern university; but devotion to the 
intellectual life and absorption in study are the 



128 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

activities which, as it were, constitute the uni- 
versity and alone make it worth while. 

The contrast, however, between the proper 
work of a student and the outside interests which 
may absorb his attention has ordinarily little to 
do with this devotion to the highest welfare of the 
university for which I have been pleading. It is 
not public service of that sort which the under- 
graduate has in mind when he speaks of student 
activities. That phrase suggests almost exclu- 
sively the idea of athletic and social activities. 
And while these are normal and proper interests 
for young m^n, too, they have tended to usurp 
too large a portion of the student's time and 
energy. Sometimes, indeed, one finds it seriously 
stated and claimed in student publications, that 
an undergraduate receives as much benefit from 
these so-called student activities as from devo- 
tion to those intellectual activities which the uni- 
versity was founded to maintain and advance. 
I have always regarded this view as utterly false 
and mischievous. And, to give the student a 
sense of proportion and to recall him to his 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES 129 

proper work, I coined a phrase a few years ago 
which seems to have lodged in the mind of our 
community. I said that, essentially considered, 
the "student activities are studious activities." 
I meant, of course, to bring out in this somewhat 
epigrammatic way the vital and all-important 
fact that a student was here to study, and that no 
other activity whatever could take the place of 
that fundamental duty. It is through and by 
study that the university is to aid and benefit the 
student. A student who neglects that vital busi- 
ness for outside interests, arguing perhaps that 
these are as beneficial to him as study, is labor- 
ing under a great and fatal delusion. 

A university is a place of study. The student 
may, indeed, pursue other objects, but they must 
always remain subordinate to his main duty and 
purpose, if he is really to be a student. Study 
is his vocation; sports, society, the theater, etc., 
can never be more than an avocation. Legiti- 
mate and commendable as means of innocent 
recreation and amusement, they are to be con- 
demned when they distract the student's atten- 



130 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

tion from his proper work, or divert from it time 
and energy which are needed for the successful 
accomplishment of that work. 

As regards athletics, a distinction must be 
made. The tendency in American universities 
to-day is everywhere to demand too large a por- 
tion of the time of those undergraduates who en- 
gage in intercollegiate sports for practice and 
training. Eeform is called for; but reform, I 
imagine, is possible only through joint action on 
the part of the leading universities. It is not, 
however, too much to hope that in a country 
governed by public opinion, even this reform in 
our universities may be brought about by insist- 
ent and intelligent discussion and criticism, espe- 
cially by members of university communities. 

Though I am dissatisfied with the athletic 
system now in vogue in our colleges and universi- 
ties, I do not want to give the impression that 
things are really worse than they are. Here at 
Cornell I recognize that our coaches are insist- 
ing with constantly increasing emphasis that the 
members of the teams must maintain good 
academic records. Of course, they have a special 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES 131 

interest in the matter as the faculty ^' drops '' 
men who fall below the prescribed scholastic 
standards, and it is of no use to coach under- 
graduates for intercollegiate teams if they are 
not permitted to remain in the university. I 
think, however, that the coaches are also coming 
to recognize that as the young men have come to 
the university to study, it is not right to deprive 
them of the boon of education for the sake of 
athletic achievements. At any rate, the scholas- 
tic standing of the men who are members of the 
Cornell teams and crews, though falling below 
that of the average student, is not lower than 
that of the students who are members of fraterni- 
ties; and in the case of the crew it is distinctly 
higher. 

The two changes I should like to see in the field 
of athletics are these : first, a reduction of the time 
demanded of members of the teams and crews; 
and, secondly, a more general participation in 
sports and games of all kinds by students gen- 
erally. As I have said, the first reform will prob- 
ably have to wait upon cooperative action on the 
part of a group of influential or representative 



132 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

universities; though every change in that direc- 
tion which an individual university can possibly 
make within the limits of the present system 
should be encouraged at Cornell University. 
The second reform, however, is within our own 
power; and I am delighted to signalize the pro- 
gress which in this regard is constantly going on 
at Cornell University. Increasing numbers of 
students do engage in athletic games and sports 
for the enjoyment of the thing, without any 
thought of " making " a 'varsity team or crew. 
And the playground which the alumni have so 
generously provided in the immediate vicinity of 
the campus at once facilitates and stimulates this 
healthful recreation. My own ideal would be 
the participation in such games of practically 
every student in the university. And I welcome 
the contests between our different classes, col- 
leges, fraternities, and other organizations which 
at once multiply the number of such games and 
arouse and intensify interest in them. This sys- 
tem of democratic and domestic intramural ath- 
letics will, I venture to predict, survive and 
flourish when the system of intercollegiate ath- 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES 133 

letics, which to-day trains a few men to make 
spectacles for vast crowds of strangers, shall have 
been greatly modified, if not entirely suppressed. 
But no branch of athletics is a substitute for 
study. The same thing is true of social distrac- 
tions, to which at Cornell our fraternities are 
especially exposed. In 1913-14 there were about 
1500 fraternity men in the university, and their 
average standing during the first term was 70.7 
per cent. ; for the same period the average stand- 
ing of non-fraternity men was 74.2 per cent. It 
may be that athletics appeal more strongly to fra- 
ternity men than to other students, but I sus- 
pect that it is social distractions which, in the 
main, account for the lower standing of fraternity 
men. Fraternity houses furnish congenial con- 
ditions for social life. And social intercourse 
is a great boon in the life of young men. Here, 
as elsewhere, the problem is to use our opportu- 
nities and advantages without abusing them. It 
is for fraternities to show that they can furnish 
the conditions of a normal and healthful social 
life, without interfering with the student's scho- 
lastic attainments, or weakening his intellectual 



134 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

ambitions and interests. So far fraternities in 
America have not furnished this demonstration. 
And I desire to impress upon the fraternities of 
Cornell, which are now so numerous and embrace 
so large a fraction of our young men, the obliga- 
tion under which they lie, of proving that the 
delightful social opportunities which they offer 
are not incompatible with good scholarship or the 
development and maintenance of an intellectual 
atmosphere. 

Besides athletic and social functions, the ex- 
tra-academic activities of students run in a va- 
riety of smaller channels, among which may be 
mentioned undergraduate publications, literary, 
oratorical, and dramatic performances, political 
and ethical reform, the organized work of the Cor- 
nell University Christian Association, etc., etc., 
etc. I have not time to discuss these in detail. 
Suffice it to say that they all commend themselves 
in a measure by their intellectual, moral, or re- 
ligious character. But to all of them I apply the 
same criterion which I have laid down in regard 
to social and athletic activities. The university 
being a place of study, a student has no right to 



STUDENT ACTIVITIES 135 

neglect his studies even for ethical and religious 
work or edification, and much less to gratify a 
histrionic ambition, or to win the so-called 
" honor " of election to the editorial or manag- 
ing board of some under-graduate publication. 
The chief end of a student is to study. So long as 
he is privileged to remain in the university, so 
long as these precious years of preparation for 
life are vouchsafed to him, his supreme duty is 
to study hard. 

In man there is nothing great but mind. Col- 
leges and universities exist for the training and 
development of the mind. Let students never 
forget that everything else in their student lives 
is subordinate to that transcendent object. 
There are indeed ancillary activities, but, es- 
sentially considered, student activities are stu- 
dious activities. 



GEADUATION 
By Liberty Hyde Bailey 

TO graduate is a worthy result and much to 
be desired. To graduate is to begin — to 
pass one epoch and to enter another. It is a time 
of letting go and of taking hold. One gathers up 
the past that one may be full of harmonies for the 
future. One steps out into the world with a great 
experience in idealism and relieved of the dead 
burden of selfishness^ as of a strong man entered 
for the running. 

It is a good world into which you go, albeit a 
world of wars and rumors of wars. At all events, 
it is our only world of present activity. We shall 
gain nothing out of it if we oppose it habitually, 
but we shall find much if we accept it and enter 
into its promise. The world would present little 
to arouse our challenge and to stimulate con- 
quest, if it were all perfect to our liking, if the 
paths were broad and all the prospects pleas- 

136 



GRADUATION 137 

ing. The high passions of mankind relieve the 
monotones and provide the deep shadows and the 
high lights. There is much to overcome. When 
the problems are all solved, the planet will no 
longer be a fit abode for living men. 

Every life is a personal life. The degree of its 
personality is very much the degree of its satis- 
factions. To develop the social feeling at the 
same time that we develop and retain the strong 
individual — this is the major problem of civ- 
ilization. Every graduate goes out as a highly 
developed personality ; this is the purpose of edu- 
cation, for education, if it is effective, deals al- 
ways with the individual rather than with the 
class or the mass. At the present day we think 
much of the group-consciousness. Everything 
that is organizable is organized, and some things 
beside. But above all organization are persons, 
and behind all organizations are persons ; and the 
organization is only what the persons make it to 
be. Then be not deceived: think not of life in 
terms of organization. Personality is the pri- 
mary product : organization is the secondary. 

The graduate has the rare privilege to carry 



138 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

with him always a college course and four years 
of good reflection. At the time when others have 
begun business, the graduate has found a phi- 
losophy of life or has gone far to develop it if the 
four and more years have been worth the while. 
He may change his occupation and build his home 
in strange places, but he will have reasons, he 
will know bases of comparison, he will go with a 
purpose in him. It is pleasant to feel the whip- 
ping of the winds if we do not whip with them. 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 
By Jacob Gould Schurman 

iEditor's Note: This article was written by President 
Schurman as a commentary upon several letters which were 
published in the same number. These letters were received 
from F. A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of 
New York ; Theodore N. Vail, president of the American Tele- 
phone and Telegraph Company ; F. W. Woolworth, president 
of the Woolworth Co. ; Samuel Untermeyer, corporation law- 
yer ; and S. S. McClure, president of the S. S. McClure Com- 
pany. 

AS regards the letters published in this issue 
of The Era on the general subject of " The 
College Man in Business/' I will condense what 
reflections I desire to make in the following 
form : 

(1) While the business man aims to make 
money in rendering service to the community, 
it must not be assumed that for the business man 
any more than for the lawyer, doctor, or any other 
professional man, money is the chief end of life. 
From the nature of his employment the man of 

139 



140 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

business tends to put more emphasis on Ms gains, 
but the gains by which he measures his success in 
business are not the standard of success in life. 
Our having and getting are, in any rational, or 
moral, or religious view of life, quite subordinate 
to our being and doing. A great fortune may be 
a useful instrumentality in life, but the man who 
makes it the supreme end of life abdicates man- 
hood with its high call to character, intelligence, 
and honorable service. It is well to " put money 
in thy purse," but ill to let the purse lord it over 
thy heart and mind and spirit. 

(2) From the preceding paragraph it will be 
easy to see the proper justification for a college 
education as a part of the training of the future 
business man. I have always deprecated the 
common tendency to justify it on the ground that 
his college training made the graduate a more suc- 
cessful money-getter. This may be true. Yet 
even if true, it is not the justification of his col- 
lege education. That education does not aim at 
any extrinsic end. Its object is to make the 
youth a larger being, to expand his faculties, to 
stimulate his capacities, to enlarge his horizon, 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 141 

to multiply his interests, to develop his whole 
imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual existence, 
to nurture him with the creations of immortal 
genius, and, in a word, to make him, in the fine 
phrase of Plato, a spectator of all time and all 
existence. A youth, whose intellectual and spir- 
itual life has, even in some moderate degree, been 
awakened and stimulated by his college educa- 
tion, who has come to feel that the things of the 
mind and spirit are the highest and most impor- 
tant things in the world, does not need any fur- 
ther demonstration of the value of a college edu- 
cation. And even though he should believe that 
it does not make him a better money -getter he will 
never regret the time and effort devoted to it, 
for he knows that in itself it is worth more than 
great riches. 

(3 ) It is not, however, to be denied that this col- 
lege education, which needs no justification be- 
yond its own intrinsic value and results, does, in 
many cases, if not in all, turn out to be the best 
possible preparation for business. A college 
education tends to nourish and develop mind- 
power. And, as Mr. Chalmers states, and I 



142 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

think with perfect truth, the first condition of 
success in business is " ability to think.'' Now 
the college man has been very unfortunate in his 
training who has not formed the habit of marshal- 
ing facts, weighing evidence, and drawing correct 
conclusions. Indeed, the chief aim and object 
of the college is to give the student this very train- 
ing in thinking and reasoning which we see to be 
the first condition of success in business. 

(4) The considerations already set forth show 
the relative advantages secured respectively by 
two candidates for a business career, one of whom 
on leaving the high school enters college and the 
other of whom goes into business. The latter has 
the advantage of doing the humble and disagree- 
able task of his calling at an age when they make 
the least impression on him. Boys of seventeen 
or eighteen years of age expect to " fag " and 
serve their seniors. Furthermore the boy who 
begins business at that age has acquired the 
routine and mastery of the specific jobs assigned 
to boys while his comrade is still a junior or sen- 
ior in college. But the latter, when he does come 
upon the scene, will in the course of the next 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 143 

dozen years as a general rule outstrip the former. 
If he is educated he has learned how to think 
and use his powers, and though it may be humil- 
iating to begin with the lowest jobs in the busi- 
ness, the young American with the right stuff and 
spirit in him will not disdain any honorable work 
or forego any opportunity for showing what he 
can do, and his college training will enable him 
to do his w^ork more effectively and thus abridge 
the apprenticeship of preparation for higher 
things. And, as I have already intimated, the 
future is with the college graduate. Mr. Chal- 
mers puts the case clearly and fairly : 

" Four years spent at college are not com- 
mercially equivalent to four years spent in TdusI- 
ness. But I think they are potentially more than 
equivalent to the four business years." 

(5) Being at college is not the same as secur- 
ing a college education. I wish it were. I wish 
that all our colleges and universities were places 
in which everybody worked to the maximum of 
his capacity without injury to health or interfer- 
ence with moderate social intercourse, relaxation, 
and amusement. But, unfortunately, many men 



144 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

who live four years at a university do not get a 
college education. Mr. Vanderlip refers to cer- 
tain obstacles which hamper the college graduate, 
such as inaccuracy, procrastination, a laissez- 
faire attitude, immoderate use of intoxicating 
liquors. It is undoubtedly true that habits of 
the character suggested by Mr. Vanderlip may be 
acquired or fostered in college by many college 
men. But, in my estimation, only a small minor- 
ity of college men fall into these evil ways. Such 
habits handicap college men in business just as 
they do in the professions or trades. The author- 
ities in control of American colleges and uni- 
versities realize the dangers of these vices and are, 
I believe, doing all they can to encourage ac- 
curacy, decision, industry, initiative, and temper- 
ance in the characters of the young men attend- 
ing the institutions over which they have con- 
trol. 

But that some, and I think only a small per- 
centage of college graduates, are lazy or inac- 
curate or intemperate is not necessarily a reflec- 
tion upon the advantages of a college education 
as a preparation for business life. It may well be 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 145 

that these same men who, as college graduates, 
are vicious, would have acquired the same bad 
habits had they gone immediately from the high 
school into business. A certain number of col- 
lege-bred men are of weak character, a certain 
number of non-college men are lacking in moral 
and intellectual strength. I am not inclined to 
believe that the circumstances and incidents of 
a college course are more apt to breed bad char- 
acter than the ordinary environment outside of 
college. 

The young man measuring the advantage of 
college as a preparation for business life, how- 
ever, must fix clearly in his mind the distinction 
between attending college and getting a college 
education. Mere residence in a college or uni- 
versity town will bring him comparatively few 
benefits. Close and unremitting study alone will 
train his mind and judgment, store his brain with 
information, and stimulate his appreciation of the 
noble and beautiful. 

(6) Lastly, the young man entering a busi- 
ness career, with or without a college prepara- 
tion, should note well Mr. Woolworth's statement 



146 ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS 

that probably only five per cent, of all men enter- 
ing business are successful. Competition is so 
keen in the field of modern business that only the 
best-equipped can survive. And many factors en- 
ter into the determination of success, besides the 
ability of the man, natural and acquired. The 
capital at command, the backing of friends, the 
condition of trade at the time the effort is made, 
and all the many accidents of commerce, have 
much to do with the young man's success or fail- 
ure in business. Not every able college-trained 
man will succeed in business, nor will every able 
young man whose experience is acquired solely in 
business reach commercial success. 

But the " success in business " to which Mr. 
Woolworth alludes is no doubt the amassing of 
great wealth and not merely the earning of a 
livelihood and the acquisition of a comfortable 
competency. It is without doubt true that only 
a small proportion of America's young men can 
hope to become millionaires through their efforts 
in business. But the great majority of those who 
are of good character and who are well trained 
may with justification expect a more moderate de- 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN BUSINESS 147 

gree of success. After all, the success which the 
business man should most covet is the securing 
of an income sufficient to maintain himself and 
family comfortably and to give his children a good 
education, and the rendition of his reasonable 
service to the community. Under this latter head 
I would include the benefit he can afford to the 
community in which he as a business man deals. 
He should also exercise in the place of his resi- 
dence the influence of an educated man for the im- 
provement of social and governmental conditions. 
The getting of money in large quantities he may 
well subordinate to his own influence on the 
welfare of his fellow men. 



THE END 



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